Dahlia Stark - The Omega Saga
by Vayelan
Summary: Dahlia Stark survives an attack that kills her parents. She is rescued by the Migrant Fleet, where she spends the next twelve years of her life. The story begins when, at the age of 26, Dahlia is exiled from the Flotilla. Too afraid to return to Alliance space, she chooses to find a new path on Omega.
1. Into Exile

"You're allowed to speak. We still have a ways to go before we reach the relay - may as well make the most of the time we have left."

Other than the hum and throb of the veins running through the ship, tracing back to the eezo core heart, the helm remained quiet. Not even the echo of the Quarian's almost digital voice hung in the recirculated, sterilized air. She'd let her passenger mope long enough, stewing in her bitterness.

"Dahlia, at least do it for me. You know I hate silence."

"Ship's hardly silent. Sounds like she's running rough. You should've let me have a look at the conduits before we left, Imani."

"At this point, I would've been brought before the Admiralty Board, too, if I so much as handed you a wrench."

"Has a human ever been exiled from the Flotilla before? I think I deserve some applause for such a feat."

"We may never see each other again, Dahlia. If there is anything you've ever wanted to say to me, this could be your last chance."

"You're not my mother, Imani. My name was never Dahlia'Barael nar Helash. It was always just Dahlia Stark."

Imani wanted to say "I'm the closest thing to family you've had in twelve years." She knew better, though. Dahlia would react sharply, even if she said nothing back. It would be traitorous to remind Dahlia of the past now that she was, yet again, losing so much of her life.

"Remember when you were seventeen and demanded to be allowed on Pilgrimage?"

"I learned what it looks like when Quarians blush, I remember that."

Imani's laughter buzzed softly through her helmet's speaker.

"Do you know what you never found out about that?"

"I would say 'nothing,' since I know that you argued with Captain Brill on my behalf on that one."

"What? How did you know about that? I never wanted to mention it because my plea failed."

"Imani'Barael, the goody-goody of the Helash, only let's herself get into trouble for one person on the Flotilla. When Brill brought the hammer down on you, I knew what it was about. For what it's worth, I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused you."

"Are you sure? This sounds an awful lot like a mother-daughter conversation."

"Don't flatter yourself. You're a big sister. An aunt, tops."

Dahlia suddenly felt like talking. Even with the low rumble of the tiny ship's inner workings, without the shuffling footsteps, creaking suits, and digitized voices of hundreds of other Quarians, Imani probably felt very alone. She really did hate silence, and after everything she'd put Imani through, Dahlia couldn't bear to make her suffer this quietly. It was the least she could do to repay Imani for volunteering to deliver Dahlia from the Migrant Fleet. Imani was probably the only one on the Helash sorry to see her go.

Dahlia could hear Imani humming beneath her breath, the faint sound amplified by her helmet and speaker. It was her tell: she was trying to swallow a question.

"There is no way this could be any more awkward, so don't hold back. What is it you want to ask...'sis'?"

The last bit was meant to charmingly pry the words out of Imani.

"Why Omega? If I thought I could fool you, I'd have secretly plotted a course for Alliance Space. Your parents lived on Bekenstein. You might have other family or friends there?"

"If there was anything or anyone for me there, don't you think I would have gone back ages ago? Mum and dad are dead, and so are my ties to that damn planet."

"Omega is dangerous. That rock is run by pirates, mercs, and crime rings. It's rife with Vorcha and...and…"

"The Batarians did not kill my parents."

"What?" Imani wasn't sure she heard Dahlia properly. Maybe she was being dramatic again, trying to make a point.

"You want to be close to me? I'll share my biggest secret with you. Batarian pirates didn't ambush my family at Intai'sei. That was a smokescreen. It was really some hired guns sent by the other heads of Jormangund. I heard my dad identify them to mum when the attack started, when they were getting my emergency suit fitted and sealed."

"Why would your father's own company want to kill him?"

"Jormangund was never my dad's company. Stark Industries died in the merger and took a big chunk of my dad to the grave with it. After a few years, the Jormangund execs figured they'd milked as many tech designs and business contacts out of my family as they could, so they decided to finish cleaning house and scoop up everything we had left. I know the truth about the attack. If I set foot on Bekenstein, I'm as good as dead. I want to go to Omega because I'm choosing uncertain doom over certain doom."

Silence reigned supreme again at the helm, but now it owed its existence to Imani'Barael. She agreed with Dahlia: this was a damn big secret, one her human "sister" had sat on for twelve years. Imani begged herself for the right words to offer Dahlia.

"Tony Stark...your father...he was a true friend of the Flotilla."

"That's the only reason I was allowed to stick around after they patched me back together."

"We couldn't abandon a good man's daughter."

"No, but you can exile her."

"Dahlia, don't oversimplify this. What you did...it's one of our worst crimes, short of outright treason against the fleet. Even if you thought you had good intentions...well...good intentions were what cost us our home. We cannot go back to Rannoch, but you have the option to return to Earth. That is a greater opportunity than I have."

"You want to leave the Flotilla?"

"No, but...I'd like more out of life. More than just scraping by, struggling to survive. You know how many Quarians want the same. No other human has experienced our way of life like you have. Don't you want more from your life?"

The helm returned to silence. Dahlia had no answer for that question. She never did.


	2. Pepper

"My name is Dahlia Stark, I just stepped onto Omega, and I've made a terrible mistake. Imani dropped me off and we said our awkward goodbyes, but as soon as her ship was out of sight I wanted to beg her to come back for me. This rock is dark, cold, and it smells terrible. Why'd I skip on Bekenstein? Sure it would be filled with people out to kill me, but at least I'd die in comfortable surroundings."

Dahlia huddled in a cramped corner, practically wedged into a narrow shaft off the main paths, bathed in the pale orange light of her omni-tool. She momentarily glared at the device and shook her wrist like she was chastising a broken toy.

"Pepper, I hope you're getting this because I'm not repeating myself. I said you could come out from hiding."

"Don't worry, ma'am. I am here. I am listening"

The doll-sized woman appeared atop the disc of the omni-tool's holographic projector in the same orange hue. Dahlia squinted at the tiny motes of light forming the faint freckles on the hologram's face - they were one of the last features, however superficial and functionless, that Dahlia had programmed into the A.I. before her work was discovered aboard the Helash. Most of its primary and secondary routines were long since completed. Tertiary features, like personality, were interrupted by Dahlia's trial and exile from the Flotilla.

Even though the Admiralty Board ordered the A.I. destroyed, Dahlia only turned over an incomplete V.I. copy. She secretly downloaded the real program and concealed it within a series of scaled-down hard drives and server banks built into the rig she wore. The electronic components on her belt and harness blended in with, well, what a lifetime among the Quarians taught her to call her "suit."

Dahlia was human and did not have the Quarian's weakened immune system, but they did not find her unharmed twelve years ago. Unlike her parents, she survived the attack on their ship at Intai'sei, staged by Jormungund hatchetmen to look like a Batarian raid; however, Dahlia was severely wounded. During the attack, when her parents realized the situation was hopeless, they strapped her into an emergency survival suit that her father had designed. Even protection built by Tony Stark could only do so much against oxygen fires and partial vacuum exposure. The suit kept her alive until the Quarians arrived, long after the attackers had vanished, satisfied with their unknowingly unfinished job.

Imani was right. Dahlia's father must have been a friend of the Quarians. Why else would they bear the expense that must have been needed to save her life? Parts of her had to be rebuilt. Other parts could not be saved. A suite of prosthetics and synthetic components were integrated into the survival suit, partially fused to her body, to return some semblance of life to her. She counted herself fortunate that, unlike her Quarian rescuers, she could live without a helmet - although she rarely went without one. When her controversial request to stay with the Fleet was granted, she kept her helmet on both to keep her germs to herself and to better fit in.

Since arriving on Omega, she hadn't removed her helmet. She'd only been on the station for an hour and did not want to look like an easy mark for thugs or crooks. Her omni-tool, a personal customization, would look like a valuable prize - even without hosting a genuine A.I. Accessing the device was a risk, but she needed someone to talk to.

"Shhh. We'll need to keep it down," Dahlia warned the A.I. She was twenty-six years old, but felt very much like a frightened child at the moment.

"I will keep my volume lower, ma'am," the A.I. said in a digitized whisper. Despite the tension wrapping around her like the dank shadows of the Omega tunnel, Dahlia suddenly wished she could find the time and tools to upgrade Pepper's programming. It was embarrassing, but Dahlia had a particular vision in mind for the A.I.

The inspiration came from her parents. Long ago, her father had conspiratorially shared with his daughter his own plans for an A.I. He could trust her with the knowledge. Her mother, on the other hand, would have vehemently dissuaded her husband away from such forbidden technology. However, the personality Tony had outlined for his A.I. program was more in line with a classic butler. When Dahlia began her own clandestine project after being taken in by the Flotilla, she needed the support of a different type of figure.

The smart business suit, the freckles, and other aspects of the A.I. were meant to replicate Dahlia's lost mother. If her father was Dahlia's font of creativity, then her mother was her source of stability. Both parents shared secrets with their daughter. In Virginia "Pepper" Stark's case, she passed along stories of Dahlia's father's wild youth and lingering tendencies. Even as a young woman, Dahlia recognized that her father would have been a wreck without her mother.

"What would the old folks do in this situation?"

"I'm not sure, ma'am. I never met your parents."

"Yeah, I guess this time everything's just on us."

"This tunnel cannot be too comfortable. Finding shelter, as well as provisions, seems like the most pressing priority."

"That's assuming we're planning on staying on Omega."

"Even so, it may take some time to find safe passage off the station...and even longer to afford it."

"Yeah, our exile didn't exactly come with a severance package."

"And if I may be so frank, ma'am: do you actually have any other destination in mind?"

"Would it be hopelessly futile to say that I'd like to go back to the Flotilla?"

"Yes."

"Well then, up for a little exploring, Pepper? If we're going to be here for a while, we'll need to know the lay of the land. I'll hook you into this rock's computers and see what you can scrounge up."

"What should I look for, ma'am?"

"Identify dangerous people and places to keep away from, power players on the station, and folks with a reputation for welcoming outsiders. Also, be on the lookout for any Quarians on Pilgrimage. They probably won't know about my exile, so we may be able to help each other out."


	3. The Trash Heap

"Ma'am, I've located two quarians - one male, one female - at a nearby docking bay. I'm listening in to their conversation via nearby devices. As you suspected, they are here on Omega for their Pilgrimage."

"Can you tell how long they've been here?"

"I have no details, but it seems like they are not recent arrivals."

"So they probably haven't heard of my exile?"

"Affirmative. Also, ma'am, while running search processes through vulnerable systems on the station, I also found something within my own programs. It may be of interest to you."

"What do you mean? How do you just 'find' something in your programs?"

"Ma'am, you based my programming on a virtual intelligence your father compiled and installed in his ship. Hidden within the subroutines were several encrypted data files. As a V.I., I could only access the files under the authority of two people."

"Mum and dad?"

"Indeed. Anthony Edward Stark and Pepper Stark-Potts, deceased."

"But now that you're sapient, more aware...?"

"I have no such restrictions."

"All right then, show me what you got. The quarians can wait a few minutes."

* * *

"That looked like one of our ships. Think it was dropping off someone else on their Pilgrimage?"

The young quarian stopped suddenly, the angular curve of his helmet's faceplate staring at the vessel sliding away from the red lights of the station's docks and out into space. His companion, for her part, just shook her helmeted head and touched a thickly gloved hand as close to her temple as she could.

"Hann, how many people would be dumb enough to come to Omega? This was a terrible idea you talked me into."

"Where else could we go, Elsai? If we go to the Citadel, we'd live like refugees."

"I've heard human worlds can be very welcoming. Their colonists are eager for technical expertise."

"First off, we are not technicians," Hann said, raising a finger, eager to make his point. "We've basically been menial labor our whole lives. It's bad enough that the rest of the galaxy assumes every quarian is a technical wizard, but we shouldn't play up to that. I don't want to be put in charge of a terraforming operation and have the whole thing explode because I couldn't admit that I didn't know what I was doing."

"Well, they could still use our help. We may be grunt labor, but that's always in demand. You've dreamt of becoming a marine marksman. You could use some training, and any colony would be glad to have another protector."

"Not on a human world. The bigger problem would be protecting ourselves. I'm not going to let some Cerberus terrorist or Terra Firma fanatic smash my faceplate or sabotage my suit."

"Keelah, now who's making generalizations?" Her helmet's speaker thinly veiled Elsai's exasperation, both for Hann's logic and for her own foolish choice to follow it. "All right, what do you have against an asari or turian world? Or a salarian world?"

"Asari are too elitist. Turians are too strict. Salarians are too demanding."

"It's almost like the Pilgrimage is meant to make us harder working, more dependable people, boshtet."

"No. The point is to bring something important back home. Anything important on a settled world will already be tied up, firmly in someone's grasp. On Omega we have a better chance of scrounging up something useful, like a salvaged ship - or technology you can't find in Citadel space."

"Omega is where the galaxy throws its trash. I just can't imagine what we could possibly find here."

* * *

"I remember this. What did dad call it?" Dahlia meant the question for herself, trying to jog her memory, but her A.I. companion volunteered the answer.

"Anthony Stark called it the Arc Reactor. It was based on preliminary development conducted by his own father, Howard Anthony Walter Stark, as a potential power source for Earth's next generation of spacecraft. However, the success of element zero-powered reactors rendered the arc reactor technology a dead end. An old article in the Westerlund News Archives called it 'The Blunder that Killed Stark Industries.'"

"How about this one? How'd this kill the family business? I don't recognize this one."

"Repulsor Technology, meant to be a propulsion system for atmospheric and intraplanetary craft."

"Let me guess: killed by the mass effect."

"Indeed. With the mass effect afforded by element zero drives capable of reducing a vehicle's weight to almost negligible amounts, other propulsion systems became exponentially more efficient. Manufacturers utilized more conventional, less expensive, and less experimental alternatives."

"No one wanted to take a shot on one of Tony Stark's unproven designs, right?"

"Approximately 127 articles written by technical and market analysts agree, yes."

"So Pepper, these scrapped designs have been in our hard drives all this time?"

"Yes, ma'am. I could not freely identify them previously. The awareness I've developed since your last upgrade to my programming rendered me able to bring these and other schematics to your attention."

"If mum and dad couldn't get these designs off the ground, I'm not sure what I can do with them. Still, it's better than nothing. Hmm...maybe a pair of quarians on Pilgrimage would be interested. Do we have any more information on them?"

"I've cross-referenced observed details about the two subjects against records I copied from the Migrant Fleet. The female is Elsai'Rann nar Shellen. The male is Hann'Koto nar Shellen."

"Liveship bumpkins, then? Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's better than nothing. Time to introduce myself."


	4. Vorcha Eyes and Krogan Brains

Pepper confirmed for Dahlia that the two quarian pilgrims had been on Omega for a few weeks already and they were unlikely to have heard of Dahlia's very recent exile. Being a clever girl, Dahlia knew that hiding such a secret from them would be a potential time bomb, but by the same token it was hardly a great icebreaker. Pepper asked Dahlia if she planned to offer the Arc Reactor and Repulsor designs to the Migrant Fleet as a peace offering, using the two pilgrims as an intermediary.

"That's giving me way too much credit. I never plan that far ahead. The way I see it, I've only got two assets to my name: you and these designs. I've been thinking, and I'm not too eager to give up either. However, I'm also not crazy about spending much more time alone on this rock. We'll be safer in a group, right? Let's just go make nice and see where that gets us."

Dahlia found the two quarians hauling cargo, loading small shipping cases onto a transport sled. The port buzzed with activity. Skycars hovered lazily through the thick, smoky air. Shuttles and a couple of small freighters dozed like hibernating beasts at their docking pylons.

A number of red, sunken eyes glared at her from within the burned-out shell of some former shop or small warehouse. Dahlia had never before seen vorcha in the flesh, but now they eyed her warily. She had kept her helmet on, not wanting to betray her identity or even distinguish herself. She assumed that her suit and rig - the same modified, evolved, and heavily repaired survival suit that once protected her from the destruction of her parents' ship - characterized her as a spacer or perhaps a mercenary. Even if they didn't peg her as an easy mark, she considered any amount of attention the wrong kind of attention.

Her own wariness made Dahlia conscious of her impression on the quarians. Presumably, they'd be nervous to find a dark stranger approaching them on Omega.

"Excuse me," Dahlia said, trying to keep her stance as nonthreatening as possible. It was futile because the male gave a quick, digitized squeal of fright, the crate slipping from his hands and clattering to the ground. The commotion drew many eyes - vorcha, batarian, human, and more. Dahlia and the female quarian both groaned through their helmets' speakers.

"If you're looking to rob us," the female said dryly, "You should be warned that this cargo belongs to a krogan. Also, I don't know where the bathroom is, and unless you're a fan of dextro-amino nutrient paste, I can't recommend a good place to eat."

Twelve years had taught Dahlia to read Quarian body language. The tilt of her helmet and angle of the faceplate suggested that she was curiously appraising Dahlia's own helmet and suit, which bore traces of the Flotilla in their parts and symbols.

"Actually, I'm a serial killer who targets quarians, and I incorporate pieces of my victims' suits into my own."

"Really?" the male squeaked.

"She's joking, Hann. She's either very bad at jokes or doesn't know how to stalk people properly."

"I'm terrible at both, honestly. My name is Dahlia. I just arrived on this rock after leaving the Flotilla, and I was hoping to find some friendly faceplates."

"You're from the Flotilla?" she asked, incredulous.

"Wait...I know who this is!" Hann exclaimed. Dahlia tried to quiet him down, hoping the vorcha were not still paying attention to her. "This is that human from the Helash - Tony Stark's daughter."

"I didn't think I had a reputation worth preceding me."

"You're practically a celebrity. What brings you to Omega?" Hann was gushing with enthusiasm.

"Same as you two: Pilgrimage." The false words left a bitter taste in Dahlia's mouth. She didn't enjoy lying, but she knew it had to be done - at least in the short term. "Obviously not in any official sense, but I figured that if I wanted to leave then the Admiralty Board couldn't imprison me for it. Of course, the downside was that it meant leaving without any of the usual gifts or helping hands so, to be honest, I was hoping you'd allow me to team up with you."

"Keelah. Help from Dahlia Stark? That would be like a gift from the ancestors. Yes, yes, please, we'd love your help."

"Anyhow, I'm Elsai'Rann nar Shellen," the female quarian interrupted to begin a proper introduction. "My babbling friend here is Hann'Koto nar Shellen. Unfortunately, we can't really stop to chat for long right now because we need to finish loading these cases for Orsk."

Dahlia's response was just to pick up the next case and lay it on the transport sled. Elsai wordlessly accepted the assistance, but Hann was more vocal about his relief.

"If she's helping, can I take a break? My fingers hurt like angry little boshtets. This is our third load today."

When the sled neared capacity, Hann hopped onto the last open spot. His three-fingered hands desperately worked to massage away their ache through the thickly insulated gloves, before alternating to rub each foot's pair of toes.

"Mass effect or not, I'm not pushing your lazy butt this time," Elsai declared.

"I came late to the party. I'll handle this load."

Dahlia activated the underpowered mass effect field generator on the sled. A negative electric current coursed through the miniscule amount of element zero inside, reducing the effective weight of the sled's cargo, including Hann. However, the contragravity drive - a hopelessly feeble version of the propulsion on a skycar - could barely lift the sled into a hover. Perhaps Elsai was right and Hann's rear was dragging things down because Dahlia was sure that the sled scraped against the ground as she pushed it along. Even though the Flotilla depended on salvaged equipment, the quarians took far better care of their machinery. Dahlia surmised that this "Orsk," presumably an employer for Elsai and Hann, tried to operate on the cheap.

As Dahlia leaned her weight into the sled to shove the cargo forward, she noticed the vorcha creeping closer. Their eyes aimed directly at Dahlia and the quarians. She cursed that not even one day had passed before getting into trouble. She also wondered if any of her new friends' pilgrimage gifts included a pistol or other weaponry. In a flash of regrettable insight, she realized that, even if they were armed, a pair of kids used to tending hydroponics gardens on a liveship probably were not very good fighters.

However, violence was not in the cards. Even as Dahlia's gloved knuckles tightened on the sled's rail handle, tensely anticipating a fight, the vorcha merely nodded with their nonetheless menacing grins and stood by the heaps of remaining crates at the dock. Elsai returned their nods with an idle wave of her hand; Hann did not interrupt his attempts to soothe his sore muscles. The vorcha drew their own pistols but caused no trouble. Three of them merely stood guard over the cargo.

The fourth took a position beside the sled and hissed, "Let's go."

Dahlia groaned inwardly, feeling foolish that she'd been afraid of what were evidently coworkers. She tried to move past the silent embarrassment and asked Elsai where they were hauling the crates.

Elsai's directions brought the troupe into a marketplace in one of Omega's quizzically named districts. The lights cast shades of crimson and orange across the ramshackle shops and stalls lining the crowded "streets" - hardly more than the space left between hives of pipes and ducts. The innumerable crevices, crawlspaces, and alleyways were tinged by shadows in deepening shades of gray and black. For all the sights surrounding her, Dahlia found herself struggling to keep her eyes from the vorcha guard. His...her...its own eyes were darting elsewhere around the market, on alert for threats. Dahlia had never encountered something so outright "alien" before, and she'd seen suitless quarians. Shaking her head, she tried again to focus on the other unfamiliar spectacles they passed.

Eventually they found their way to a large open-air vendor pavilion with a squat, reinforced warehouse at the rear. Countless people - young and old of practically every sapient species - swarmed the shop. The shelves, racks, and cooler units all contained foodstuffs. Crude, hand-painted signs declared what was dextro-amino safe, what was levo-amino safe, and all sorts of other interspecies dietary concerns. A number of other guards, bearing odd red facepaint, kept watch at key positions. They viewed every patron, even children, suspiciously.

The guards waved the sled towards the rear, one of whom dragged open a heavy gate leading into the warehouse. Inside, Dahlia was treated to yet another uncanny sight. Inventorying an assortment of crates, all containing food supplies, was a krogan wearing an enormous human-style business suit - necktie and all. The vorcha guard stayed outside, and the gate slid closed behind Dahlia, Elsai, and Hann.

"Hmm...Elsai, Hann, I don't recall asking you to bring back any humans with the cargo," the krogan mused. "I hope there won't be any need for unpleasantness."

"I'm a recent arrival from the Migrant Fleet, if you'd believe it," Dahlia said, cutting off the quarians before they could fill in any details better kept private. "I saw these two and wanted to help them out."

"I hope there weren't any promises of payment. That would have to go through me. Hann, get off the cargo," the krogan snapped.

"We didn't say anything about money, Mr. Orsk," Hann pleaded, hopping down from the transport sled. "She just offered us assistance on her own, that's all."

"I must admit, I am curious about a suited human from the Flotilla," Orsk hummed. "Then again, there's no shortage of curiosities on this station."

"Likewise, I'm surprised to find Omega's answer to a grocery store. Years of hearing that Omega was nothing but mercs, gun runners, drug smugglers, and fugitives overshadowed the fact that normal people live here, too," Dahlia said, glancing at Hann and Elsai.

"Basic necessities and everyday commodities may not carry the profit margins of weapons and narcotics, but the demand is just as constant," Orsk explained proudly. "In fact, whereas only a certain clientele are interested in Omega's more infamous goods, everyone needs to eat. Plus it paints a smaller target on my hump, but it still gives me a surprising amount of pull. No one wants to cross the man in charge of the food supply."

Orsk chuckled at his own humor, his scaly bulk shifting subtly beneath his roughly tailored suit.

"What exactly is your arrangement with Hann and Elsai?" Dahlia asked.

"They do odd jobs for me - hauling shipments from the docks, cleaning up after the crowds, some light maintenance - and in exchange I provide them a clean place to stay and purified dextro-amino nutrient paste on the house."

"No actual pay?"

"As I said, my profit margins are thin. I need to keep costs low. It's just good business."

"Don't cause trouble," Hann whispered, tugging Dahlia aside. "He may think like a volus, but he's really not that bad."

Overhearing her friend's not-so-quiet attempt at whispering, Elsai sighed to herself. She remembered Hann's earlier rant about quarian stereotypes. His obliviousness to the irony was more grating than endearing.

"I just wanted to know what I was in for if I asked for a piece of the 'action.' Any use for a human who redefines the phrase 'technical genius?'"

"Hah, I like your bravado! These kids," Orsk said, waving his beefy, dark-sleeved arm towards the quarians, "are dunces with machines. After seeing Hann hopelessly trying to fix the broken gate controls, I assumed the fleet kicked them out for being useless or, based on how badly Hann fried the controls, for breaking something important. Consider yourself hired."


	5. Interview with the Krogan

The crack of Orsk's knuckles when he laced his fingers and folded his arms on the rickety table echoed off the towers of refrigeration cases in the otherwise empty warehouse. Some sort of four-winged moth, sneaking in through gaps in the ceiling, flittered around the lights. The krogan boss, still in his custom-tailored business suit, sat across from Dahlia like an interrogator. She avoided looking in his yellow eyes or at his greenish skull crest and instead inspected the signs hanging on the far wall behind him.

Days Since Last Accident: 8, Days Since Last Blood Rage: 86.

"I thought you said I was hired. What's with the interview?"

"I like to handle things professionally. Consider it a formality. While I may not have the highest standards, as you may have guessed from the quarian kids, I still try to screen my applicants. There are plenty of other people on Omega willing to hire the dregs. Not me."

Hann and Elsai were sorting and storing the non-perishable supplies they'd brought in from the docks. The vorcha and other guards, who were members of a gang called the Talons according to Hann, kept an eye on the market and on each other.

For the first time since arriving on the lawless rock, Dahlia had removed her helmet. Orsk insisted upon it. Thick droplets of collected condensation clung to her dark eyebrows and close cropped hair. Without her helmet, she'd naively hoped that she'd receive a rush of cool, fresh air. Instead, her naked head found only uncomfortably warm, stale air haunting the market.

"To start with," Orsk said, clearing his throat like a trumpeting elephant, "Why do you want to work for our company?"

Dahlia was momentarily taken aback, curious about how much research Orsk had done on Earth business customs.

"Well, I've always been fascinated by the eating habits of other species. You know, what kind of cheese vorcha prefer, how many sandwiches your average batarian makes in a week."

"I see, so this is a scientific interest?"

_Does this bosh'tet really not understand sarcasm_, Dahlia thought to herself while nodding dumbly.

"Where do you see yourself in five years?"

"Sitting on a throne made from the bones of my enemies."

"Ooo, good answer," the krogan crooned. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"...two?"

"Well, you can count. That puts you ahead of most applicants. Okay, last question: who are you hiding from?"

Dahlia raised an eyebrow, sending a drop of sweat running down into her eye.

"I know the other questions were pointless," Orsk explained. "Just because I believe in formality, it doesn't mean we can't have some fun. This question, however, is very serious and I expect a very serious answer. No one comes to Omega with a clean past. We're all hiding from someone. In case you're running from something especially ugly, I want to know if it's going to come knocking down my door."

The question turned Dahlia's stomach. Her answer had to fight to escape against the lump in her throat.

"No one is looking for me. I'm supposed to be dead."

"Ah, faked your death then?"

"More like it was faked for me. I don't plan on making any waves or attracting any attention."

Orsk merely nodded and extended his thick arm for a handshake.

"Welcome aboard," he croaked.


	6. Problem Solver

"Keelah! What was that?"

Hann practically jumped onto a stack of crates full of dried varren meat when the small mechanical critter raced by his feet.

"Even after I welded patches over the gaps in the walls and ceiling," Dahlia said, "vermin were still getting into the warehouse, so I've been using scrap electronics to cobble together this 'mouser drone.' It tracks down small lifeforms within the confines of the warehouse and stuns them with a short range electrical pulse."

"When do you have time for all this? Don't you sleep? You've patched the warehouse, repaired the gate controls, improved the efficiency of this place's wiring, and you're building drones, too?"

"Hann's just mad because you're making him look bad in front of Orsk," Elsai explained, wielding a metal stick to pick up the unconscious carcass of some kind of scaly rodent caught by the mouser.

"Why don't we just bring Dahlia back for our Pilgrimage gift?" Hann asked, tentatively stepping down from his perch. "She's clearly the mechanical genius that everyone here thinks we're supposed to be."

"Bringing me back to the Flotilla would be like pickpocketing an admiral then saying 'Hey, did you drop this?' I don't think it will work," Dahlia said, using a thin layer of logic to disguise the fact that she was banned from returning. "I must admit, though, after only a week on this rock, I miss the fleet more than I thought I would."

"I don't see how you could," Elsai snorted. "Omega's nowhere near as cramped as our ships back home. I actually get moments of privacy around here. Plus if something breaks down, it doesn't mean that hundreds of people could die."

"While I wouldn't look at it so dramatically," Dahlia said, using gloved hands to fill the tray Hann held with some sort of vegetable with blood red leaves, "that is part of what I miss. Serving on the Helash's maintenance teams kept me busy, and I actually enjoyed it."

"Wouldn't you rather be inventing new starship drives or weapons like your father did?" Elsai asked.

"I guess the galaxy will never get tired of hearing me say 'I am not like my father.' He was the visionary, imagining problems that didn't exist yet and developing solutions. I'm a problem solver. I see the problem first, then I fix it."

"There's no shortage of problems around here to be fixed," Hann said. "Orsk makes that clear every time he yells at me."

"Something's different here, though; something's off. Like Elsai said, if something breaks down here, it's no big deal. On the Flotilla...I don't know - it felt like my work really mattered."

The quarians did not realize that Dahlia had a similar conversation with Pepper the previous night - or at least when she was going to sleep. Without a sun or sky, Omega hardly had day or night cycles. One of the reasons why Dahlia held her tongue during the journey with Imani was because she did not want to reveal how bitter the exile felt, even before it truly began. When she became a teenager, Dahlia discovered the pressure the galaxy heaped upon her parents. Her dad was saddled with trying to live up to the inventive legacy of his own father, a man Dahlia never knew, and the onus of failure he bore every time his work was eclipsed by alien competitors. As for her mum, she had struggled to keep Stark Industries afloat, and then it was her duty to convince her husband to let go and sell the company to Jormangund. Afterwards, the real Pepper had to grapple with Jormangund's corporate intrigue and prevent her husband from sliding back into alcoholism.

"Based on my information about your parents, perhaps you were the variable that kept them going," Pepper said.

Dahlia hated when the A.I. said that when they discussed the past. The notion stirred too many emotions within her. Dahlia felt guilty that her parents had suffered so much on her behalf. She felt cheated that there was no one to similarly motivate her. Most of all, the feeling she desperately wanted to escape was shame and failure. Her parents' last accomplishment was saving her, and Dahlia worried that she'd squandered their gift of life. Being able to help her shipmates aboard the Helash at least made her time seem meaningful.

However, when Pepper suggested that Dahlia enjoyed having others depend on her, she began to shiver. The idea, frankly, terrified her. Dahlia actually snapped at her digital companion - using hissed whispers to avoid waking up Elsai and Hann in their nearby bunks - and ordered Pepper to shut down. The exchange left her very sleepless, and Dahlia spent the rest of the night working on the mouser drone after hearing the squeaks and scrabbling of rodents.

It took a lot of focus to keep awake while working with the quarians, at Orsk's beck and call to keep the market running during another busy day. As her eyelids became impossibly heavy and her senses faded in and out, the same nagging thought continued to creep back into her sleep-deprived mind just as easily as Dahlia tried to chase it away. When she let herself accept and focus on the idea, her mind buzzed and it became easier to stay awake.

"I want to build them," she muttered aloud to keep herself awake.

"What?" Elsai asked.

"It's kind of a long story. I recently unlocked some encrypted files my father left behind. They include designs for inventions he never got to fully develop. I don't know why, but I want to try to build them."

"Designs from Tony Stark?" Hann gasped. "That would be amazing! Imagine bringing those back to the Flotilla."

"Don't get ahead of yourself, bucket boy," Dahlia warned, using the nickname that Orsk had coined. "I don't have much left of my family, so I'm not eager to give anything away. Besides, my father would never debut an unfinished, unproven project, so no one gets anything until I put the prototypes through their paces."

"That's not fair," Hann whined.

"I've told you before, Hann: the Pilgrimage is meant to be difficult," Elsai scolded. "We can't just expect hand outs."

"You're right," Hann sighed through his helmet speaker. "That's why so many people think quarians are thieves and freeloaders. No way I'll prove them right. Dahlia, we'll help you any way we can."

"Um, I wouldn't exactly throw ourselves in just like that. Then again, I always knew someone would take advantage of us in this wretched place, and it may as well be Dahlia."

The quarians' enthusiasm surprised Dahlia. It caught her so unawares, she couldn't help but want to share a bit more with them before starting on this project.

It had only taken a few days for Dahlia to understand just how much of a mistake it was to work for Orsk. He styled his techniques on the business culture of Earth, but his research seemed to have focused on the era of the tycoons and robber barons in the very early 20th century. He expected his employees to either be working or sleeping. He offered no time off, no break periods, and even stops to go relieve oneself were begrudgingly tolerated. At least his mercs and guards got paid. His grunt labor was given a bunkhouse built from a shipping crate, two daily meals of nutrient paste, and roughly seven hours per day when they were not required to work.

"The Flotilla was never as bad as this," Hann bemoaned while again rubbing his sore joints. "While we were expected to pull our weight, we at least had some leisure time."

Dahlia and the quarians laid in their swaying bunks, letting the exhaustion of the day drift away. Dahlia shifted feverishly, unable to ever get comfortable in the hammock-like bed.

"Orsk seems to believe that sleep counts as leisure time," Elsai said.

"This is why we need to find something to bring back. We need to get back home as soon as we can."

"It was your idea to come to Omega," Elsai said to Hann accusingly. "I'm glad to see you finally agree with me that this place is awful. If only you could have admitted it weeks ago."

"Well, we'll help Dahlia, she'll build something amazing, and we'll all return to the fleet like heroes."

Elsai and Dahlia shared a groan, unaware that they were both reluctant to return home for their own reasons.

"But, um, what exactly will we be building?" Hann asked.

Dahlia fired up her omni-tool. She had already introduced them to Pepper, describing her as a personalized V.I., so there was no surprise when she appeared. However, Dahlia herself was somewhat surprised by how Pepper responded to her summons.

"Oh, you need me _now _ma'am? What can _I_ do for _you_?"

She hoped that the kids did not notice the sarcasm in Pepper's voice. The A.I. resented being dismissed so angrily the night before, something a V.I. should be incapable of. Dahlia did not hate that her companion was capable of talking back to her. Just like her father had needed the real Pepper to keep him in line, Dahlia programmed the A.I. to be blunt with her. Starks often needed a verbal kick in the rear.

Dahlia could not apologize now, lest Pepper's true nature be revealed. She had to hope that Pepper would cooperate for now and wait until later for Dahlia's penance. For now, she politely asked Pepper to cycle through the holographic schematics of the arc reactor, repulsors, and other devices - alternating between technical, exploded, and rendered prototype views. If she suspected the quarians of being crafty, she might be worried about sharing such important information with them. For better or worse, though, she trusted that they were sincere, honest, and naive. They would be easy partners, but Dahlia feared she'd be left with regrets by the end after lying to them.

For now, they were very much baffled by what they were looking at. Over the days they'd toiled together, Dahlia learned that Hann and Elsai had primarily tended the hydroponics bays on the liveship Shellen since coming of age, becoming old enough to wear their first suits and do real work. The machinery they were used to was probably much simpler, more robust, and far less experimental. She explained the technology as best as she could, and after Hann failed to hide his amazement, she also had to describe the reasons why the devices had never hit the market.

"My father always thought big, perhaps too big. Part of why I've been so obsessed with this lately is because I may have a new angle...a new application for these devices. I've been thinking about going...smaller. The arc reactor may not be able to compete with eezo reactors in large scale applications, but if we miniaturize the arc reactor it can be a superior power source for survival suits, mechs, omni-tools, and other personal-size devices."

"What about those repulsors?" Elsai asked. "Are you thinking about scaling them down?"

"Actually, yes. The Alliance and some merc companies have been trying out jumpsuits for their commandos to allow for aerial deployment or jet-assisted jumps. They depend on chemical fuel with limited power output and poor energy efficiency. Pairing personal-sized repulsors with an arc reactor power source, though, could provide a person with full flight capabilities. The conventional jumpsuits use chemical rockets in the boots and backpack. We could replace those with repulsor emitters. Hmm, but controlling yaw and pitch would be a problem."

"Yaw what?" Elsai asked, puzzled.

"Aerodynamics issues. Essentially, how would we keep the user from just blasting out of control in a random direction? Hell, I imagine someone trying out repulsor boots would end up catapulting themselves into a wall or something. Short, jet-assisted jumps are one thing. Sustained flight is more difficult."

Hann was evidently simply impressed by the prospect of flightsuits. Restless, he had jumped out of his hammock and was mock flying through the bunkhouse with his arms outstretched. It was so childish, Elsai threw her head back into her hammock in frustration. Dahlia was too amused to look away.

"Hey! How about putting repulsors in the gloves? Would that at least make you go faster?"

"Hann!" Elsai snapped, bolting back upright, "That is...Dahlia, I don't know anything about aerodynamics. Is Hann being an idiot again?"

"No," Dahlia said slowly, surprised. "That might actually work. A pair of palm-mounted repulsors could be used to stabilize the suit's flight, providing yaw and pitch control as well as maneuverability."

"You'd have to be careful, though," Hann said. "If you wave at someone or try to shake hands, like humans do, you could seriously hurt them."

"Unless you actually want to hurt them," Elsai added. "Sounds like it could be an effective weapon."

"By limiting the energy output, it could be a strong but non-lethal weapon," Dahlia said, impressed by the brainstorming session's progress. "This is actually coming together."

"Now we simply need to find enough credits and parts to assemble experimental, possibly military-grade hardware out of shipping crate."

"All three of us are veterans of the Flotilla," Hann said defiantly. "Who knows more than us about doing a lot with very little?"


	7. Performance Review

Orsk called Dahlia into his "office," his name for the corner of the warehouse where he had dragged a rickety table and wobbly chairs. There was no mystery about why the krogan boss wanted to harangue Dahlia. She'd been ditching work fairly frequently - regularly, even - to scrounge for parts around the district's trash heaps. It was dirty work. Even though she wore her full survival suit, helmet and all, each day's end left her feeling very unclean. Scrap was a valuable commodity, readily snatched up by other scavengers on the station. For every usable bit of wire or other component she found, there were ten more varren bones picked clean of meat, mountains of soiled scraps of clothing, reams of food packaging, and so much xeno-feces.

While she sacrificed less sleep to collecting and tinkering, now more time was spent decontaminating her suit...repeatedly.

However, even as Orsk tried to politely chew her out, all Dahlia could think about was palladium. The core of the arc reactor required several grams of palladium, and it was the one material she had trouble locating. The valuable metal was critical in cybernetics and active defenses, like armor shielding, so it carried a high salvage price. Finding any lying around was a matter of luck, and Dahlia didn't think she had any to spare. She couldn't even purchase any from other scavengers because she'd yet to earn any credits from working for Orsk...a job she probably wouldn't have for much longer.

"Do you think I like being here?" Orsk croaked. The question, oddly, dragged Dahlia out of her thoughts.

"Not fond of your own work? Maybe you're in the wrong line of work."

"No," the krogan spat. "I love my job. I love what I do. I operate several markets across the station. I practically own the food supply in the Fumi, Gozu, and Kima districts. What I want, though, is the Tuhi commercial district. There are nearly eight million mouths on this station, and I want them all eating out of my hand," Orsk said, outstretching his three sausage-like fingers before clenching them into a heavy fist.

"You do mean metaphorically, right?" Dahlia smirked.

"Tuhi is a mercantile battleground," the krogan said, ignoring his employee's sarcasm. "As much as I would like to, I can't simply march in and set up shop. I needed to set up a foothold here in Doru district, but I hate this corner of the station. It's so boring, and the workers are too incompetent."

Dahlia idly wondered whether he was referring to Hann or herself this time.

"I would much rather oversee operations at my more lucrative markets in the more critical districts, but for now I'm stuck here...just like you. You work for me, which means my word is your law. When I want something fixed, you fix it. When I want something cleaned, you clean it. If I want you to jump off a walkway," he chuckled, "Well, you better ask whether I'll let you flap your arms on the way down."

"So I'm guessing this is a bad time to ask for a raise?" Dahlia asked petulantly. The signs behind Orsk had been updated.

Days Since Last Accident: 3. "Such as shame," Dahlia thought, "Graal seemed like a nice guy for a vorcha."

Days Since Last Blood Rage: 99. Dahlia was morbidly curious to see if she could reset that clock. She came close.

Orsk slammed his fist onto the table, finally shattering three of its four withered legs, and shouted for Dahlia to get to work stocking the batarian cheese.

When she stepped outside, she found Hann and Elsai already cracking open the storage cases. Their helmets may have protected them, but Dahlia's bare head left her exposed to the wafting stench. She gagged and reeled back, worried that she might wretch. Since arriving on Omega, Dahlia had encountered some pungent smells, but nothing as vile as this.

"Is...is that supposed to smell like that?" she said with her hand over her nose and mouth, wondering if she should retrieve her suit's helmet.

"I was more worried about the purple blotches," Hann said, "and the little black mites crawling through the holes. Is this normal for batarian cheese?"

"Pepper?" Dahlia called, hoping this morning's apology had appeased the A.I.'s ego after their disagreement two nights prior. She crept closer to the foul cheese and waved her omni-tool over the open cases "Can we get an expert opinion?"

"My analysis indicates that the crates were improperly sealed. The cheese is in advanced stages of mold and shows signs of infestation by Khar'shan moss mites."

"This can't be safe to eat," Elsai said.

"Correct. Consuming even small amounts of this tainted cheese would result in fatal anaphylactic shock in quarians and turians, as well as potentially lethal food poisoning in batarians and all other council races. Only krogan, vorcha, and varren could potentially consume samples of this cheese without risk of death. Even then, it would still likely bring debilitating gastrointestinal issues."

"We're going to have to toss this junk out," Hann said. "We can't sell this to anyone."

"What's going on, you lazy bums?" Orsk bellowed. "I smell cheese, but I don't see it on the racks yet."

"This cheese is tainted," Hann explained. "We can't sell it."

"Sure we can! There's nothing wrong with that cheese," Orsk countered.

"Can't you smell it?" Dahlia asked.

"Look at it. It's purple and green," Elsai added.

"That's normal for batarian cheese. Get it out on the racks immediately or I'll fire you...out an airlock," Orsk chuckled at his favorite gag.

"I checked it with my omni-tool," Dahlia insisted. "It's not safe."

"We're not here to coddle the consumers," Orsk said. "Buyer beware, after all. Just because we put it out for sale doesn't mean they have to buy it. We're not shoving it down their throats."

Elsai's shoulders slumped. Dahlia guessed that she wasn't keen on arguing with a krogan. The human, for her part, wasn't feeling particular defiant anymore, either. She couldn't risk causing such a conflict before completing her work on the arc reactor, especially since her work on a prototype was hidden in Orsk's bunkhouse.

However, Hann did not feel like backing down.

"This cheese has mites in it! They could infest our other food. Anything we sell could make people sick. It's not safe."

"Do you know how much it cost to import this cheese from Khar'shan?" Orsk growled, creeping closer to the insolent quarian. "Bribes. Fees for smugglers. There are a lot of batarians in this district who miss their favorite cheese, and they're willing to pay out all four eye sockets for it. We are not trashing this shipment."

Dahlia could read quarian facial expressions through their faceplates. While Hann had no more words, under his helmet his forehead was wrinkling in the quarian equivalent of a scowl. He grabbed an open case of cheese, marched over to a waste chute while Orsk watched with a hardening grimace, and dumped the rotten food into the oblivion below. Dahlia remembered the signs inside Orsk's office and realized that both would need to be reset.

"I'm going to shove your bucket-head down that chute next!" Orsk howled as he charged for Hann.

Dahlia was glad that Hann jumped out of the way, even if she thought his squeal of fright was a bit unbecoming.

Orsk's arm crashed into the waste chute, crimping the hatch shut like it was made of paper. His scales and muscles ripped through the sleeve of his business suit, which also shredded at the rough seam along his hump. Hann scrambled to keep out of arm's reach. Elsai kept her distance, concerned for her friend but hesitant to throw herself in the krogan's path. Instead, she ran for the bunkhouse.

Dahlia suddenly, desperately wished for a palm-mounted repulsor to blast Orsk into submission. As much as Orsk had chastised her for shirking her responsibilities, she regretted not spending more time working on her secret projects. Even if she had another weapon, it probably wouldn't be strong enough to stop the enraged krogan.

Hann had been so focused on escaping Orsk that he failed to notice the Talon gang guards arriving. They easily restrained him, seizing his arms and hissing threats to disconnect and cough into his airlines. Orsk slowly marched towards the captive quarian, focused malice on his broad face.

A gunshot ricocheted off Orsk's skull crest.

Aboard the Helash, Dahlia had seen several young quarians depart with lightweight, inexpensive pistols among their Pilgrimage gifts. Living with them in the bunkhouse for two weeks, Dahlia had seen that Hann and Elsai's combined pool of gifts had been relatively thrifty. At first she thought that much of what they brought with them had been spent or stolen, but Elsai explained that their families were not very well off and could not afford to spare much for their Pilgrimage. Between them, the two shared a single Elkoss Combine-manufactured pistol, part of their bargain bin Edge line of handheld weapons.

While Hann had dreamt of one day becoming a marine, Elsai evidently had no such aspirations. It was clear to Dahlia that she'd had no actual training or practice with the weapon, as the recoil knocked the pistol clear from her hands' improper grip. Her shot only made contact because of the size of her target, Orsk's large head. Her shot was ineffective, but it was hardly effectless.

The Talon gangers dropped Hann to draw their own weapons. Elsai's suit had no kinetic barriers and bore no armor, other than the usual seals and safeguards against contamination. She had no protection against the heavy pistols aimed at her. Dahlia's survival suit, however, was at least lightly armored.

Dahlia tackled Elsai to the ground. The gangers opened fire, rounds from their guns striking against Dahlia's back. She kept her bare head bowed down to protect it. Each impact against her shoulder blades and spine stung unbelievably, but the pain paled in comparison to the few shots that pierced the armor and burrowed into her muscles.

The gangers might have stepped over and executed Dahlia and Elsai, but Hann hurled cases of spoiled cheese at them. The impact, coupled with the knee-buckling smell and the irritation of the moss mites, distracted and angered the gangers. They chased after Hann, who scampered away like a frightened rodent, and Orsk - giving in to blood rage - joined the hunt.

Elsai, seeing her moment, rose to escape. However, it became quickly apparent to her that Dahlia was in no shape to flee on her own. The quarian woman hoisted her new friend up with an arm around her waist and dragged them both as far, as quickly away from the market as possible. Elsai knew a good place to hide and find help, hoping that Hann would have enough sense to meet them at the clinic.


	8. Doctor's Visit

"This can't be Heaven. It smells like Omega and you two are here, but that doesn't rule out Hell."

"That's not nice!" Hann exclaimed.

"I just risked my life to save you two. I get a free pass to be honest."

Dahlia had woken up to find the quarians standing beside her cot. They were in some sort of med bay or doctor's office. The walls were bare, and myriad pipes and valves traced their way along the ceiling. Just out of sight, large vents hummed like a volus' breather. The narrow room was as spartan and uninspiring as the rest of the station, but it was oddly clean and well kept. Dahlia read the clues suggesting that whoever was in charge took serious pride in their work.

"Was I whacked out on pain meds, or did I hear someone humming show tunes while I was asleep?" Dahlia asked, propping herself up on the cot.

"That would be the...um...doctor," Elsai answered. "Dr. Solus is odd, but he's dependable. We're at his clinic in Gozu district. When we first arrived on Omega, a human woman, I think her name was Blake, told us that this was a safe haven."

"Where's my suit?" Dahlia asked. "I feel so naked."

Hann shuffled nervously. The word made him awkwardly aware of Dahlia's skin. Her torso was heavily bandaged from where Dr. Solus had treated her bullet wounds from the Talon gangers. Elsai and Hann knew that Dahlia hadn't survived her parents' deaths unscatched, but seeing what had been hidden beneath her suit was different.

"Save a picture, it'll last longer," Dahlia quipped, catching them staring at her plentiful scar tissue. "The small, uniform ones," she sighed, tracing a finger along a thin scar on her wrist, "Are where they inserted synthetics or administered reconstructive surgery. The larger ones are are a combination of extreme heat, oxygen burns, and in one case a localized depressurization. In fact, the resulting necrosis was how I lost this leg," she said tapping her prosthetic left leg.

"It's amazing you survived," Elsai said, not really sure whether she meant in the past or more recently.

"No kidding. Ship destroyed, being spaced, and suffering a suit malfunction? Even Commander Shepard couldn't survive that. Then again, I was the one with my dad's suit. Despite being flawed, it compartmentalized the depressurization, administered medi-gel, and shielded me from the brunt of the oxygen fires and the vacuum."

"After surviving all that, it would've been a shame to die over some moldy batarian cheese," Hann said ruefully.

"You stood up for the right thing," Dahlia reassured him. "Now don't do it again. How bad is our situation? Does Orsk have thugs hunting for us?" she asked, a barely perceptible quaver in her voice over the prospect of being hunted.

"I don't know," Elsai answered. "On one hand, for how little he seemed to think of us, I don't think he'd waste resources on us. Then again, it's easy to imagine him being vindictive enough to want us dead."

"For what it's worth, we should be safe here," Hann added. "One of the clinic workers mentioned how Dr. Solus single-handedly took out some gangers trying to shake him down."

"I was thinking that the doctor may need some additional hands around the clinic," Elsai suggested. "We could exchange help for protection and a place to stay. Hopefully a salarian boss will turn out better than the krogan boss."

"It'll have to," Hann said, showing some annoyance. "We're broke. We left all of our money and belongings back at Orsk's bunkhouse."

"My work on the arc reactor's hidden back there, too."

"Well you can feel free to go running back there," Hann said sarcastically. "I'm in no hurry to give Orsk a second chance to snap me in half."

"Don't worry. It's just as well that I start over on the reactor. I wasn't pleased with the quality of components I was forced to use."

An underhanded thought lurked in Dahlia's mind. A medical clinic, with all its equipment, was likely a good source of platinum and palladium. If Orsk had turned out to be a gun runner, it would have been easy for Dahlia to make components "disappear." Even before his goons almost killed her, Dahlia would have felt little remorse for stealing from the man trying to monopolize the station's food supplies.

Skimming supplies from medics, however, carried a much higher moral price. Since this Dr. Solus was willing to save a creditless stranger like herself, Dahlia found it all the harder to contemplate "borrowing" parts from his clinic. However, while the thoughts were bitter, they were still there. When she was younger and more amoral, as most teenagers are, Dahlia felt less guilt about scavenging when it suited her needs when she was on the Flotilla. That was also where she learned how desperately people will cling to scarce resources, which is why she suspected that stealing from Dr. Solus would be both difficult and acutely dangerous.

Dahlia swung her legs around and attempted to step down from the cot. Hann quickly moved to keep her from leaving the bed.

"I want to talk to Dr. Solus," she insisted, wincing through the pain of Hann tugging on her shoulders. "I want to see if I can work out some sort of arrangement."

"He specifically ordered for you to rest," Hann replied.

"We'll talk to him," Elsai said. "Contact us with your omni-tool if you need anything."

Dahlia groaned as the quarians left the recovery room. As much as she wanted to dispute the doctor's orders, she begrudgingly accepted how awful she felt - like an elcor tap danced on her back. She eased herself back down. Looking around the room, she saw a turian reading a copy of Fornax, a drell sleeping with his face to the wall, and a volus bringing flowers for a coughing asari.

"Pepper," Dahlia called softly, keenly aware of how careful she would have to be when talking with her digital companion with so many people around. "Let's have a look at the reactor schematics and figure out where we can find new parts around here."

* * *

Dahlia could only lie in bed for an hour or two before madness crept in.

She had Pepper "hide" when the turian began looking oddly at them. She didn't like the attention. They'd compiled a list of potential sources for parts from devices and equipment likely to be kept around the clinic. It was idle preparation since the more she thought about it, the less Dahlia felt able to steal from the doctors. While resting, she tried to avoid the moral conundrum with brainstorming, but it was no use. Her fingers tapped the cot in irregular rhythms and her leg twitched restlessly.

Dahlia sat up, swung herself around, and instantly hated the feel of cold concrete and metal on her bare feet. She'd retained the leggings of her undersuit, but her boots sat beneath the cot with the remnants of her survival suit and rig. She imagined that anywhere else on the station they would have been snatched away in a heartbeat. Dr. Solus' clinic must have demanded a special kind of reverence.

From the waist down, her gear was largely intact. However, the medics had cut open the upper half of her undersuit when preparing her for surgery. While the outer hardsuit was serviceable, give or take a handful of bullet holes in the back, it would not fit properly. Nevertheless, Dahlia slipped it on awkwardly like a heavy jacket since she was not keen on strutting around the clinic wearing only bandages from the waist up.

* * *

"You should not be up. Too soon after surgery."

The salarian doctor found Dahlia examining a pair of mechs standing guard by one of the clinic's entrances. He wore some manner of long white coat, bearing a broad red stripe up the center. It was partially armored, accompanied by a chestpiece supporting an angular silver headset around his neck like a collar. Dahlia's eyes briefly strayed to the crown of his head, noticing the discrepancy in size of the "horns" characteristic of his species. His right horn was shorter, bearing signs of scarring.

"If you were laid up in bed, unable to work, how would you feel?" Dahlia asked.

"Restless. Hmm...point taken. Interest in mechs?"

Dahlia took a passing notice of the doctor's motormouth, thinking back to how Elsai described this Dr. Solus as "odd."

"They have me curious. It makes sense that a clinic on this rock would need protection, but a squad of LOKI mechs seems extravagant. You must have some pull to arrange this kind of defense."

"Astute observation. But the less said…" he inhaled sharply, "the better. Also curious about yourself, your armor. No, not full combat armor. Environmental suit, clearly designed to survive space. No manufacturer's marks, not mass produced. Custom design. Material unique as well. Complex hybrid material not seen outside turian legions or Alliance commandos, but certainly not a commando. No no no, muscle mass all wrong, underdeveloped. Also signs of privation, poor nutrition. Scars not battle wounds, clearly remnants of accident...starship accident perhaps?"

"Oh...are you done? Is it my turn?" Dahlia asked at the pause, cockily bemused by the doctor's stream-of-consciousness deductions. "You're pretty close to the mark. I suppose a doctor should know details about a patient."

Dahlia shared an abridged version of her story: her parents' death, her survival, and her life aboard the Flotilla. She spared the details about her exile. It left a lump in her throat, but she even name dropped her father, hoping to impress Dr. Solus and pave the way for her proposition.

"Tony Stark. Heard the name. Not familiar with his work. Genetics and biology my specialty, not machines and engineering."

"Funny you should mention that. As the holes in my back may have tipped you off, I can't exactly go back to where I was staying. If I helped maintain and fine tune your mechs and equipment, would you let me crash here? I don't expect any pay, and as long as you don't order anyone to shoot me you'll be a vast improvement over my last employer."

"Quarian friends mentioned the idea. Interesting proposal. Been thinking it over. Your terms are…" he inhaled sharply while concluding his deliberation "Acceptable."


	9. In Treatment

Two weeks working for Orsk had dragged out like two months for how grueling the work was: hauling cargo, unpacking bulk commodities, cleaning muck and trampled produce from unknown worlds, and she and Hann were once even tasked with butchering cuts of meat from fresh varren carcasses. That was the worst, as far as Dahlia cared. Even with her suit's helmet on, protecting her from the smell and spurts of gore, her stomach turned to find herself wrist deep in the foul beasts. The ordeal was all the worse for working under the glare of the vorcha and Talon guards and enduring Orsk's constant belittling. While Hann had received the brunt of the krogan's abuse, the boss also made his low opinion of Elsai and Dahlia very clear.

Working at the Omega Clinic, however, made the time pass more quickly. The work was no less intense, since lives depended on the staff, yet the challenge was rewarding and fulfilling for Dahlia. Her new responsibilities hybridized her knack for mechanics with her drive to solve problems placed in front of her. She was all the more energized by the reception her work received. The quarian duo were already impressed by her talents, but Dahlia's confidence swelled further when she impressed other staff members working under Dr. Solus, like Dr. Daniel Abrams.

Several pieces of equipment - medical scanners, medi-gel applicators, a cell culture incubator, and other devices - that been written off as irreparable scrap were brought back to life by Dahlia. She was also able to tend to mechs that had worn down due to the combination of infrequent maintenance, constant patrol schedules, and Omega's less-than-ideal conditions. She even brought back online two LOKI mechs that had been all but scrapped when the clinic had to repel a full raid by Eclipse mercenaries. A third mech had also been wrecked in the skirmish, but Dahlia considered it a blessing that she couldn't repair it.

What parts weren't cannibalized from the third LOKI mech to fix the other two, Dahlia set aside for her second attempt at constructing an arc reactor prototype. The cybernetic circuitry even provided most of the palladium she needed to craft the reactor's core. Her attempts to covertly work on the reactor were not as easily concealed as when Dahlia worked for Orsk. Dr. Solus, despite his nearly perpetual work schedule, found time to discover Dahlia's pet project. She explained the device to him, even sharing the omni-tool schematics when the salarian doctor expressed sincere interest in the experimental device. While it was not his forte, Dr. Solus did offer worthwhile suggestions for Dahlia to incorporate. For example, he proposed mounting the reactor in the chestplate of a hardsuit.

"Such extremely high energy output on a small scale. The possibilities are...exciting. Besides repulsors, this reactor could power kinetic barriers, personal mass effect field, biometric interfaces, life support webbing, micro-servos, stimulator conduits, and numerous VI assistance programs."

As the doctor rattled off supplemental ideas, Dahlia realized for the the first time how much she missed talking with someone who spoke her language. Hann and Elsai were nice, but even basic aerodynamics befuddled them. Hann was right: not all quarians were tech whizzes.

Nevertheless, they were hardly useless as Orsk often claimed. The pair also fell into niches around the clinic. They had expected to be relegated to scrubbing down this or washing down that - probably the same menial work they did aboard the Shellen. Quickly, however, they were called upon to serve many functions of orderlies or even nurses. Hann even assisted Dr. Abrams with a few non-life-threatening procedures when none of the other staff were available. Contrary to Dahlia's personal prediction, he did not faint at the sight of blood being drawn. Even though, according to Elsai, Hann held onto childhood dreams of serving with the fleet's marines, he seemed to be taking to medicine quite well. As for Elsai, she did not get called up to help out with much physical medicine. On the contrary, she found herself treating invisible wounds.

It started when she found herself sitting next to the volus who visited the asari in the recovery room when Dahlia first woke up in the clinic. He had become a common sight around the clinic. That particular day, Elsai had been "assisting" Dahlia as she tinkered in a mech's head circuitry, which meant handing her tools or a drink of water when asked. The volus sat on a nearby bench, and Elsai heard him sobbing through his breather. Sensing she was of little real help with the mech, Elsai took a seat next to the small, round man.

Listening in on their conversation, Dahlia learned that the volus - Jin - came to the clinic at least once a day to visit his bondmate, Ryxera. She suffered from a chronic disease, the name of which Dahlia could not hope to pronounce. Dr. Solus had told the couple that the disease is treatable if caught early. Unfortunately, his mate was in the very advanced stages, and the doctor could only make her comfortable until the end. Ryxera remained stoic, but while Jin tried to keep calm during his visits with his mate, he usually broke down afterwards.

"When we first got serious...Ryxie gave me the lifespan talk," Jin told Elsai between sobs and gasps of his breather, "But I didn't care. Ryxie was the best thing...to ever happen to me, and being with her...for the rest of my life would have been...perfect...I just wanted...to make her time with me...something for her to cherish for centuries. It's...it's not supposed to be this way…. I'm not supposed to outlive her. I was not ready..."

Jin's dirge was cut off as his voice was stolen by uncontrollable choking sobs. Elsai gingerly placed her arm around his low, sloping shoulders and encouraged him to let out his sorrow. Dahlia left the hallway at that point. The outpouring of emotion tied her stomach in knots. She was very uncomfortable with intimate situations.

Jin's visits to the clinic didn't stop. After spending hours with Ryxera, he would flag down Elsai to talk to her again. She was even invited to talk with Ryxera since Jin was worried about her mental state. He wanted her to be happy for every last moment she had left.

Elsai became the clinic's unofficial therapist. The patients and visitors found her easy to talk to. Dahlia admitted inwardly that a quarian enviro-suit's faceplate offered a non-judgmental face to confess problems and worries to. Patients with uncertain diagnoses or visitors confronting the possible loss of a loved one found reassurance with Elsai. She also counseled parents regretting that they had to raise children in such a lawless place, young people of various races who came to Omega seeking their fortune but finding only ruin and injury, and the ever-present stress and anxiety about the gangs and mercs who operated across the station with impunity.

Dahlia avoided being near Elsai's impromptu therapy sessions, both to provide privacy and save herself from extreme discomfort, but the common worry about the station's frequent violence prompted her mind into action. As her injuries healed, Dahlia continued to wear the damaged remains of her survival suit as a heavy jacket. She usually wore it over a light top offered to her as a gift by Ryxera, brought from their home by Jin. Perhaps Elsai had mentioned Dahlia to the couple, as the asari offered sympathy for the wayward human woman. Dahlia's gratitude was pushed aside in her heart by the creeping sense of vulnerability she consistently felt. Even though the clinic was protected by the mechs and Dr. Solus, she was always on edge. When working on malfunctioning machinery, she never let her guard down and constantly cast eyes over her shoulders. Downtime with Elsai and Hann eased her anxiety slightly, but never fully. Dahlia was most calm when working on the arc reactor. As it neared completion, Dahlia entertained her first serious thoughts about how to apply the power source.

She was lost in these thoughts working in a storage room in the clinic, inserting the palladium core into the palm-sized reactor, when Elsai surprised her.

"How's it coming?" she asked plainly.

"Fine," Dahlia spat, recovering from her initial jolt of shock, as well as inward anger for being caught unaware. She sighed and tried to recompose herself, to be more personable. "It's almost finished, believe it or not. I was thinking about testing it out tomorrow."

"What will you do with it when it's done?"

"Assuming it works," Dahlia began, "I'm going to incorporate it into a new hardsuit. After my run-in with Orsk's thugs and my discussions with Mordin, I want something with more comprehensive defenses."

"Will it still be able to fly?"

"Of course, but I don't want to be caught with my pants down again. Sorry, human expression," she answered Elsai's curiously tilted head. "I had to explain it to folks on the Helash, too. Anyhow, I was also thinking about including some weapon systems in the suit. They wouldn't be immediate priorities, but I think they're necessary."

"Weapons? What do you want to do with this suit?" Elsai sounded genuinely baffled.

"I don't know. My parents would be appalled by the idea. Especially my mother."

Dahlia sighed at her own understatement. Pepper had also questioned this direction. Although the A.I. had been programmed to replicate her mother's personality, its reaction was a bit more subdued than Dahlia imagined for her real mother.

"Once this suit is finished, you don't know what you want to do with it?" Elsai asked "Will you try to market it? If you're going to include weapons, I imagine that most Council militaries would probably be interested in a battlesuit capable of flight. It might make a good foundation to restart your family's company."

"Honestly, that thought never occurred to me. I never really think that far ahead."

"Well I do. I think about the future all the time," Elsai said with a sigh.

"Thinking about what ship you'd like to serve aboard when you return home? Seeing you in action lately, you might make a good counselor."

"Dahlia, do you really think about returning to the Flotilla? I can't understand why you'd want to when you have the freedom to go anywhere you want, especially after you finish these projects. You'd have your pick of planets anywhere in Alliance and Council space to settle down. That's what I'd want."

Dahlia set down the arc reactor and took a deep breath before speaking.

"A lot of people have been sharing their problems with you, but I get the feeling that there's something big that you want to share with me. Frankly, I'd rather take another hail of gunfire for you. Personal stuff really makes me uncomfortable, but…" she stumbled over this part, "go ahead."

"I don't blame you for being nervous," Elsai said. "I haven't even told Hann about this. The Shellen was very large, being a liveship and all, so I saw many people go away on Pilgrimage when I was young. The ones who never returned always stuck out in my memory. I always assumed that something terrible had happened to them, like pirates or some space monster. When I got older, I overheard relatives and friends talking and learned that a few pilgrims simply decide not to return to the fleet. That discovery changed my outlook on everything."

"So you're saying…" Dahlia began. She knew the truth that Elsai was tip-toeing around, but wanted to let her admit it for herself.

"Dahlia, I don't want to return to the Migrant Fleet. Even when I agreed with Hann when he suggested teaming up for our Pilgrimage, I never actually intended to go back. There's no future there. I want more out of life than scavenging an existence aboard a cobbled together, floating junkyard, drifting from planet to planet and hoping to find enough to survive."

Dahlia understood Elsai's confession and certainly wouldn't fault her for her decision. She was even impressed by the quarian girl's decisiveness, holding strong convictions about what she did and did not want to do with her life. Imani'Barael carried the same spirit when, in their last conversation with Dahlia before parting, she admitted her own reservations about life aboard the Migrant Fleet. While Imani wanted to make something greater out of her life, though, Elsai could only envision finding a new, more fulfilling life elsewhere.

"I know the Admiralty Board and Conclave tend to be pretty conservative," Dahlia replied, "but before I left, I heard some discussion about change. I know the captain of the Idenna has been talking about finding new worlds for the quarians to settle. Even if he's an outlier, there are other captains and admirals putting together serious plans for war against the geth to retake Rannoch."

"It doesn't matter," Elsai declared. "If they try to reclaim the homeworld, they'll all be killed by the geth. And they'll never agree to find a new home. The quarians have no future."

Two things deeply disturbed Dahlia: First, Elsai referred to the Flotilla and the other quarians impersonally, saying "they" rather than "we" or "our." Dahlia couldn't remember meeting anyone else from the fleet who did that. Secondly, and what really sent a shiver down her spine, was how strongly this fatalism conflicted with the support and optimism Elsai passed along to the patients and visitors at the clinic.

For a moment, Dahlia considered finally admitting her exile from the fleet. In the end, she decided that now was not the time.

"Let's move on," she said to Elsai. "I think we need to step things up and test the arc reactor now. Would you mind helping me?"


	10. Trial Run

Being surrounded by so many people left Dahlia's shoulders shivering beneath her jacket, but when she saw Ryxera wobble out to the atrium, assisted by Jin and Elsai, it became impossible to back out. Dahlia wished she had picked a busier time at the clinic for the first flight test, but Dr. Solus and so many of the patients and staff wanted to see her work's debut that she had no choice in the matter.

Elsai was the only other witness to the arc reactor's first successful activation. Ever since the second activation when Hann was also invited to watch, he could not help but gossip throughout the clinic. In the handful of weeks since then, Dahlia was bombarded with questions about when she would fly.

The culmination of the mounting excitement was the crowd assembled in the atrium outside the clinic, crowned by open, soaring heights like an ancient cathedral. Dahlia wore a modified incarnation of her survival suit. She added clasps to fully transform the upper half into a jacket, acting as a protective layer in case the test run went awry. The most significant modifications, though, were to her harness, gloves, and boots. The completed and active arc reactor was mounted on a chest piece that Dahlia incorporated into the harness networking her omni-tool, hard drives, and micro-servers. The reactor was connected to the repulsor emitters mounted on her gloves and boots.

Over the weeks, Jin the volus helped Dahlia collect components to complete her project, as well as to upkeep the clinic's mechs and equipment. He was co-owner of a salvage business operating in several districts across the station, so Jin had access to quite a few of the bits and pieces that Dahlia needed. Ryxera asked her mate to donate extra parts as a gift for Dahlia and the quarians, both as thanks for their support at the clinic and because Ryxera was sincerely intrigued by Dahlia's work. The asari wanted to see the idea "take off" before she died.

While this aid allowed for the project to be finished quicker than Dahlia envisioned, it also placed more pressure on her. Not only was her budding professional reputation at stake, Dahlia also silently wished that the flight test would succeed to fulfill another new friend's dying wish. Given more time, she would have incorporated better, more responsive repulsor controls to her gloves. Owing to the somewhat rushed nature of the demonstration, however, she simply had to entrust Pepper to regulate the output of the emitters.

"Pepper," she whispered to the comm-link in her helmet, "What are the chances that I'm about to make a fool out of myself and disappoint a lot of people?"

"No greater than usual," the A.I. dryly joked. "We've followed your father's schematics as closely as we could. The prime variable is the quality of the components used. Obviously, salvage and scrap are not ideal resources."

"Well, if the arc reactor burns a hole through my chest or I go careening down some bottomless shaft, follow standard post-mortem protocol."

"I will delete your extranet browsing history and bookmarks, affirmative."

"As long as we have that squared away, let's get this show on the road...or off it. Let's start off with the minimum amount of thrust needed to suspend my weight off the ground. Make sure to factor in the weight of the gear."

The crowd grew silent as the transfer of power from the chest-mounted reactor into the repulsors filled the atrium with a hum that radiated off the walls and pipes and echoed into the red glow of lights above. Dahlia braced herself, but it was impossible to prepare for the lurch of her stomach rising into her throat as she jumped into the air. For an instant, she feared she would rocket into a wall because the lift exceeded her expectations. Too late, Dahlia realized that she should have specified for Pepper to focus lift output to the boot repulsors and to only use the gloves for stability. Instead, the same amount of power was released from all four emitters.

Dahlia only dared to open her eyes when the helmet's speakers picked up the sound of clapping and awed gasps from the audience below. She hovered about three meters off the ground. As she drifted slightly from side to side, Dahlia would adjust her open palms to steady her position in midair. Small plumes of white light surrounded the emitters on her palms and soles.

Looking below, she saw Elsai trying to calm an overexcited Hann. Dr. Solus held a hand to his chin and nodded in approval. Ryxera tightened her hold on Jin's hand. Even through the oxygen mask she wore, her smile was clear. Her blue eyes stared up at Dahlia, wide with amazement and joy. Even if Dahlia wanted to end the trial now, the blue glow of Ryxera's beaming face kept her aloft.

Angling her feet and raising her arms slightly, she quickly strafed to the far side of the atrium. The eyes below traced her movements as she proceeded to coast along the curve of the walls, dodging broad exposed pipes and hanging electric signs. Still unused to maneuvering, Dahlia worried that she looked very awkward to her audience. She imagined that it looked like her limbs were wobbling drunkenly, struggling to maintain stability. Nevertheless, although focusing on keeping steadily aloft left Dahlia chewing her lower lip in stress, she also felt a supernova erupting in her chest - and thankfully it wasn't a hole burnt by an overloading arc reactor.

The weightlessness was both alien and exhilarating. Throughout her life, Dahlia had flown in aircars and starships, but was always tethered by artificial gravity and inertial dampeners. Twice, she'd spacewalked on the hull of the Helash to help with external repairs; however, in those cases she had magnetic locks in her boots to anchor her. Now, Dahlia found herself truly untethered.

"Before you try anything too fancy, ma'am," Pepper chimed in through the helmet's speaker, "I would remind you that our surroundings are very narrow and cramped. Additional careful practice would be wise."

"Yeah, I wouldn't want to crash with so many people watching," Dahlia answered, thinking about Ryxera and Dr. Solus in particular. She did not want to embarrass herself in front of them. "Still, we gotta give the crowd a show. Let's increase the power output before we bring things down."

She rocketed upwards, almost out of sight of the audience below, and passed several pedways and overlooks. Dahlia caught snippets of gasps, shouts, and curses by the Omega citizens taken by surprise by the unidentified flying object zooming by. She had Pepper cut power to the repulsors. For just a moment, she hung completely weightless in the air, basking in the red, orange, and pink glow of bright electric signs. Like a thrill ride, Dahlia allowed herself to fall for a second or two before begging Pepper to reactivate the repulsors for a slow, controlled descent. Dahlia landed safely in the atrium outside the clinic's entrance and, buffeted by the roaring cheers of the crowd, suddenly found herself transformed into some sort of hero.

* * *

The success of the test flight reunited Dahlia with a happiness that had been stripped from her since the moment she was called before the Admiralty Board to face punishment for creating Pepper. However, this happiness also distracted her from one of the harsh truths about Omega: no matter what her accomplishments, no matter whether she adhered to virtue or indulged in vice, and no matter whether she was respected or feared, there would always be someone willing to betray her.

Dahlia had no way to know who from among the clinic audience sold her out, even if she had a reason to suspect that someone would. Although she might never learn the informant's identity, it would not change the outcome. The end result was all that mattered, and two days after the demonstration Dahlia found her tech put through an emergency field trial.

What passed for night on Omega had fallen. The clinic's patient load was lighter, so she used the opportunity to recalibrate a medical scan imager that had been malfunctioning. Elsai was visiting with Ryxera, and Hann was assisting Dr. Abrams with the evening rounds. The sound of mechs on the move in the hallway was the first clue that something was amiss. With the hairs on her neck prickling up beneath the collar of her jacket, she abandoned her work on the imager and clasped on her repulsor gloves. Her boots were already on - she rarely removed them - but she reached over to a nearby wire rack to retrieve her helmet.

Hann shuffled furtively into the room. He glanced over his shoulder the whole time, causing him to bang his shin against a crate of batarian-formula medi-gel in his path.

"I think we're in trouble, Dahlia," he whispered, kneeling down to massage the pain from his leg. His words made Dahlia's muscles tense beneath her protective layer.

"What's going on?" she asked, slipping on her helmet as her breath grew quick and ragged.

"Some armed thugs showed up outside the clinic. Dr. Solus put the mechs on high alert, or something, and he went out to deal with the thugs. We're supposed to secure the clinic and protect the patients."

"Who are they? What did they look like?"

"I don't know," Hann said, shivering slightly as Dahlia grasped him by the shoulders. "I didn't see them."

"Ma'am," Pepper chimed within the helmet speaker, "I've tapped into a camera outside the clinic. There are approximately six individuals in armor bearing insignia consistent with the Eclipse mercenary company."

"Who're they working for? Who sent them?" Dahlia feverishly asked the A.I. She didn't wait for a response before activating the arc reactor on her chest harness and powering on the repulsors.

"Without a connection to their communications or electronics, I have no way to know."

Hann watched Dahlia dart for a corner of the storeroom, flattening herself against the wall and keeping a repulsor-armed palm towards the door.

"Come on, Dahlia. The mechs are on patrol. Let's guard the patient rooms."

"No, no. I need...I need to guard my equipment."

Hann tilted his helmeted head curiously, but rather than second guess his ally he simply ran into the hall to check on Elsai and help the staff secure the clinic.

A haze wreathed Dahlia's mind. Pepper's voice buzzed in her ear but sounded a kilometer away. Her arms trembled. Her legs quaked like jelly. As her chest and throat seized into hyperventilation, all Dahlia could hear was Imani'Barael's voice - reminding her of the calming techniques to stave off her fear.

As a condition of allowing her to live on the fleet, the Admiralty Board and Captain Brill of the Helash had insisted that Dahlia remain within her sealed survival suit to avoid spreading contamination. Dahlia was perfectly fine with that stipulation. The rare moments when she did remove the suit - bathing or medical exams - left her intensely uncomfortable. When unknown vessels approached the fleet, Dahlia would develop hives.

"Dahlia!" Pepper blared to rattle her out of the fugue. "Mercenaries have used an access tunnel to infiltrate the clinic from below. They have already disabled two of the clinic's LOKI mechs."

"Contact Mordin and warn him."

"Dr. Solus is engaging hostiles outside and is not responding. The intruders have disabled another mech."

"You called them 'Eclipse.' What are they known for?"

"According to records from the Migrant Fleet, their company is known for using biotics and very high end weaponry and equipment."

"So they're probably not bumbling amateurs?" Dahlia asked with empty optimism.

"Negative. Another mech has gone offline. Course of action, ma'am?"

* * *

"Are there any other weapons in the clinic?" Elsai asked.

"Dr. Solus and the mechs carry the only weapons," Dr. Abrams answered as they tried to barricade the patient wing.

"Even if we had weapons, I don't think they would help," Hann said, struggling to move a heavy metal storage unit. "We had a pistol back at Orsk's, and that only made things worse."

Elsai cringed at the memory. She wasn't sure which was more dangerous, a human in armor or a krogan in a suit, but she was positive that both were beyond her abilities to fend off. She could hear snaps, pops, and dull blasts from the intruders clashing with the mechs. The machines were losing. The sounds of battle grew closer.

The battle erupted all too closely, in fact, as their slapdash barricade practically exploded in their faces. The remnants of the biotic blast arced in tiny purple flares along the concrete and pipes, damaging the hallway's lights. Elsai caught herself, but banged her helmet against the wall. Immediately her suit ran a diagnostic, registering no punctures and no concussions. Dr. Abrams fell onto his side, and Hann landed on his butt and felt his wrist twist painfully against the floor.

The wan orange glow of her holographic armor revealed the sickly pale blue of the asari's face. Thin purple lines in sharp "v" shapes highlighted her forehead, reinforcing her hawkish, predatory sneer. Her yellow armor was emblazoned at the chest, shoulders, and hips with a black emblem of a burning sun. A sharply-polished, silver shotgun dangled from the tight grip of her right hand's knuckles. Her left fist was extended forward, still bathed in the purple aurora of her biotic force.

Dr. Abrams lay frozen with fear on the ground. Elsai shifted slowly backward, propping herself against the wall. Hann tried to scramble to his feet but was hampered by the shooting pain from his wrist sending stars through his vision. Before he could get very far, the asari flared her fingers and snatched up the fleeing quarian, suspending him in the air in a swirling field of purple telekinetic energy. With a wrist flick, she tossed Hann against Elsai, sending the pair crumpling to the ground like loose rags.

"We're here for the human woman's flight tech," the asari said, raising her shotgun and leveling it at the quarians with both hands. "Hand it over and no one dies."

Her threat was interrupted by a rising electrical whine. The asari merc did not have time enough to turn around before she was sent flying down the hallway. Neither the shielding of her tech armor nor the protection of her biotic barrier could stop the overwhelming impact from both of Dahlia's palm repulsors. She'd released a single synchronized pulse from each emitter, although at far greater output than what she used during the flight trial.

Pepper had reminded Dahlia of the discussion with the quarians in Orsk's bunkhouse, seemingly so long ago, when they suggested using the repulsors as a defensive weapon. She'd managed to ambush the other infiltrating mercenaries while they were distracted by firefights with the remaining mechs. Dahlia either incapacitated them by blasting them into walls or by simply knocking them into vulnerable positions for the mechs to counterattack. She had also given Pepper access to the mechs' networking to override their V.I. controls, essentially improving their tactical approach.

With the mechs and Dr. Solus occupied with skirmishes elsewhere in and around the clinic, however, this biotic mercenary was Dahla's sole responsibility. Unfortunately, a single shot did not put the asari out of the fight. She regained her footing, but had dropped her shotgun, which a crawling Hann hurried to seize. Recognizing her assigned target, the asari focused her power into both raised hands and hurled a large violet bolt of crackling biotic energy at Dahlia. Not eager to be biotically warped, Dahlia activated a pair of repulsor boosts in quick succession to leap backward to the end of the hall and then swerve around the corner to evade the attack.

Dahlia took shelter against the wall, not lowering her guard for a moment. She thought to let the mercenary pursue her, leading her into an ambush. This asari was more strategically adept, and more ruthless, than that. From around the corner, she heard Hann grunt in pain and fear.

"Seriously?" Dahlia heard an unfamiliar voice, presumably the asari, call out laughing. "You weren't even strong enough to pull the trigger? I guess just picking up my Scimitar took everything you had, right? Hey, human! I'm thinking about using my biotics to tear this quarian's head off! I don't mind having to wash some blood off my armor again, but perhaps you'd prefer that he stayed in one piece?"

When Dahlia jumped to save Elsai from Orsk's ganger thugs, she didn't have time to think things through. Unfortunately for Hann, having time to think about the situation left Dahlia trembling. The scant courage she'd built up minutes ago had been expended. A trained killer waited just around the corner, and even to save Hann Dahlia doubted that she could face her. The seconds passed interminably with each deafening pulse running through the veins at Dahlia's temples; she swore the throbbing sounds echoed painfully inside her helmet while her heart threatened to burst from her chest and smash through her reactor harness. Although she sincerely feared that Hann would die, Dahlia painfully resigned herself to that outcome.

Like an angry insect, an automatic weapon chattered sharply in the hallway. The asari cursed bitterly, and the quarians yelped. Dahlia was still too unnerved to peer around the corner, but she heard the quick, fevered sounds of a split-second battle. Voices raised in anger, fear, and pain, before everything fell away into silence.

"Daniel, are you okay?" Dr. Solus' quick voice called from the far end of the hallway.

Dr. Abrams responded, followed closely by Elsai...and then Hann. The sound of his voice, still taut with fright but otherwise alive, finally coaxed Dahlia from her hiding spot. She found Elsai and Dr. Abrams helping Hann to his feet. The salarian doctor walked over to the asari, lying on the ground. Her tech armor was gone, and only faint wisps of biotic energy rose from her extremities. There were signs of flash scorching across her torso and face. Dr. Solus drew a pistol and finished the mercenary with a single shot, eliciting a crescendo of terrified squeals from Dr. Abrams and the quarians. Even Dahlia choked back a lump in her throat when she watched the execution.

She no longer felt like much of a hero.


	11. Liberation

After the Eclipse mercenaries' raid on the clinic, Dahlia secluded herself in her workspace and surrounded herself with the broken remnants of the mech casualties. Focusing on work to be done, problems to be solved, helped her escape the lingering anxiety. Dr. Abrams and the quarians were also still shaken, but they managed to carry on after cleaning up the mess left behind.

Her last visitor was Elsai, asking if Dahlia wanted to say anything to the bereaved Jin. During the raid, Ryxera used her natural asari biotic talent to fend off one of the mercenaries. The strain exacerbated her illness, however, and she passed away not long after. Dahlia could not even bring herself to answer Elsai's summons, so she silently kept to her work and let Elsai depart alone.

Despite the attack and Ryxera's passing, Dr. Solus resumed his rounds without pause. Dahlia marvelled at the salarian doctor's icy nerves, and she suspected that he had a military past. Immediately after watching Dr. Solus execute the downed asari mercenary, Dahlia stormed the nearest room with a sink. She almost didn't remove her helmet in time before literally spilling her guts.

"Out of the clinic's twelve mechs, seven were taken down," Dahlia assessed at the beginning of the new project in the storage room she'd commandeered.

"The simplicity of their tactics," Pepper surmised, "means that while LOKI mechs can deal with low grade threats, like individual criminals or small groups of gang members, a focused assault by well-trained, well-equipped mercenaries is beyond their parameters."

"Definitely seems that way. However, I think I can get six of them back online."

"I disagree, ma'am. After running an initial diagnostic, I've come to the conclusion that reactivating four units is a more reasonable target, even if we recycle components from irreparable units."

"Well, that sounds like a challenge to me."

While advising Dahlia in repairing - or salvaging - the damaged mechs, the A.I. also inserted snippets of the anxiety management advice that she'd copied from Imani'Barael.

Back aboard the Helash, Dahlia had instructed Pepper to copy data from the fleet's databases without leaving any trace or actually tampering with their systems in the slightest. Pepper also took the initiative to tap into Imani's omni-tool, where she kept files on coping with anxiety and stress. The instructional vids and therapeutic dossiers were logged in a sub-folder labeled "For Dahlia." Pepper hadn't shared this information with Dahlia, but she subtly used the downloaded techniques to help her companion through stressful moments.

"Ma'am, that mech is not complete," Pepper interjected several hours later. "Its short range energy pulse emitter is offline."

"I cannibalized the parts to repair the damaged processors and cybernetics."

"Then you could not actually repair it."

"Are you accusing me of cheating?" Dahlia laughed. "It's better to have the mech back on its feet without the electrical weapon than to keep it in scrap. We might even be able to upgrade its tactical protocols to have this one hang back and offer long range support while the other mechs move forward."

"You mean that _I_ could upgrade its protocols, correct ma'am?"

"I, we, it's the same thing. We're a team."

Their conversation was interrupted by a ginger knocking just outside the storage room. Silhouetted against the sheet Dahlia hung from the doorway for privacy - a trick picked up from the Flotilla where privacy was a precious luxury - was the shadow of a tall humanoid. Without waiting for an invitation, the visitor parted the curtain and entered. Dahlia's view immediately jumped to the two pairs of dark brown eyes set amongst the shallow ridges running along his oblong, globular head.

He chewed his thin lip, seemingly searching for his words, allowing Dahlia to survey her uninvited visitor. She likened his leathery skin to the color of a poorly nourished grass lawn, like that of an old neighbor on Bekenstein. In fact, his nose reminded Dahlia of a dog she also encountered on Bekenstein as a little girl. Her mother called it a "pug" and the overexcited beast had leapt all over the tiny Dahlia. This batarian, however, carefully kept his distance. His stance was not nearly as uncertain or timid as Hann's, but he was still far from aggressive.

Just to be safe, Dahlia whispered for Pepper to reactivate the two mechs they'd already brought back to functionality. The metallic whir of their limbs reaching for their pistols spooked the batarian, who stepped backward with his calloused palms raised plaintively.

"Hold up, I'm not here to cause trouble," he pleaded hoarsely. "I actually wanted to ask for your help."

* * *

The batarian offered to treat Dahlia to lunch from one of the vendors plying the Gozu district, but she preferred a simple meal in the clinic's cramped lounge. She also insisted on having Hann and Elsai join them. Dahlia wanted to keep her friends close, and she especially wanted Dr. Solus nearby.

"So who are you?" Dahlia asked the batarian point blank.

"My name is David Ghule Zhang and I…"

"Wait," Dahlia interrupted, incredulous. "Your name is...David?"

"You can call me Dave," he said, matter-of-factly. After a moment of blank stares, he added, "I was raised by human parents. I have my adoptive family's surname, I'm personally named after a my mother's father, and my middle name was a traditional batarian name my parents chose to help me keep some of my roots. Unfortunately, they didn't realize that 'Ghule' is traditional _female _name. Oh well, it's no different than having Leslie or Marion as a middle name."

"You said you wanted my help. Do you need something fixed?" Dahlia asked, amused and slightly disarmed by the batarian's candor.

"Um, it's more like a situation that needs to be fixed," David said, tapping fingers together, an anxious tell. "A pirate ship put into port here a few days ago. It's full of soon-to-be slaves. I want to rescue them."

The announcement caused Hann to nearly choke on his dextro-amino nutrient paste.

"I think we're done here," Dahlia said, rising to bolt back to her workshop. Her escape was halted when David's thick fingers wrapped around her wrist. Even through her suit's dense material, once meant to survive the vacuum of space, Dahlia felt her skin prickle at the unwelcome contact.

Elsai, unlike Hann, had identified her human companion's need for personal space early in their friendship, and she feared that Dahlia would have unleashed a repulsor blast on the batarian if she had not slipped her gloves off to eat.

"My uncle and his family are among the slaves. Their colony was hit by these raiders. The ship leaves Omega in less than three days, and after that my relatives are doomed. I can't abandon them."

"Why not hire some mercenaries?" Dahlia spat, snapping her arm away from the batarian yet no longer hurrying away from the table.

"None of the hired guns I could afford would be willing to cross slavers or pirates. I had a plan to handle this myself, but I would need your help, specifically, Ms. Stark. I had hoped your past would encourage you to help."

"My past?" Dahlia asked with rising suspicion, slipping on her gloves none-too-subtly.

"You probably don't remember me, but I was in the recovery room when you were brought in by your friends," David said, gesturing to Hann and Elsai. "I was getting over an infection. I'd stressed myself to sickness trying to track these slavers. I overheard one of your friends mentioning that you'd been attacked by batarian pirates. I asked to be moved to a different recovery room so as to not make you uncomfortable."

Dahlia begrudgingly admitted that the batarian appeared sincere. She also inwardly groaned, again debating if and when to reveal the true identity of her family's killers to Hann and Elsai.

"But then I saw you demonstrate your flight suit," David said, almost awed, "and heard how you helped the doctor defend the clinic. It seemed like serendipity, too good to be true. I thought you were the one person on the station who could help me."

"Why not ask Dr. Solus himself?" Dahlia asked. "I'm pretty sure he used to be a commando or something."

"I don't doubt that. Frankly," David said, casting his four eyes downward for a moment, "the salarian scares me. I didn't want to approach him right away. I was planning on talking to him after convincing you to help...or if you turned me down."

"I'm not a soldier," Dahlia declared. "Hell, I'm not even an engineer. My formal education ended at the age of fourteen."

"I'm not asking you to risk your life for nothing," David pleaded, desperation edging into the dark pools of his eyes. "I'm not even asking for you to act out of justice or vengeance. I can promise you a reward."

"Reward?" Hann asked, perking up. "What kind of reward?"

"If my plan works," David said, "The slaver's ship and everything inside - credits, tech, armor, weapons - can be yours. I just want to rescue my uncle and the other prisoners."

"You can count me in," Hann said, bolting upright with his hands gripping the table's edge.

"Hann!" Elsai scolded.

"A whole ship and its contents as Pilgrimage gifts!? We could return to the fleet like heroes!" he exclaimed.

"We're even less of soldiers than Dahlia is!" Elsai berated him. "We don't have her suit and rig. Keelah, we don't even have a pistol between us anymore."

The quarians' rising argument drowned from Dahlia's ears. Her head was bare, but it still felt like she wore her helmet. The world around her faded as she withdrew into her own thoughts. Even without a speaker, she imagined Pepper's digital voice chiming in her mind, asking what she planned to do.

"You said you had a plan," Dahlia said after uncounted moments, blocking out her deafening heartbeat and silencing the bickering quarians. "I'm not committing to anything until I know precisely how half-assed this operation is."

"Trust me, I put my whole ass into this," David smiled, gently shifting the alignment of ridges around his mouth into a wider, rounder shape.

* * *

The ship was small, less than seventy meters in length - shorter but taller than a Kowloon-class freighter. Like an overgrown varren, the ruddy brown beast slumbered at its mooring. A cargo hold was slung along the bottom, like the distended belly of a satiated predator. Small gun turrets were nestled like bristles along the nape of its neck and on its snout. A pair of fusion torch thrusters sat at the rear, just barely visible from where Dahlia and her "team" approached on the docks.

David took the forefront, leading the others by a length of cord tied to their wrists. He played the part of slaver, after having his simple wardrobe "toughened" by input from Jin and Hann. A red bandana was tied around his scalp, some impromptu spiked wristbands were crafted from scrap in Dahlia's workspace, and Elsai drew a "tattoo" on his arm - there was debate amongst everyone about what it looked like. Elsai insisted she drew a varren, but Hann said it looked like a sick krogan and David thought it looked like a pointy cloud. Dahlia just thought it looked stupid.

Since their batarian "mastermind" had no weapons of his own, that was another accessory they had to provide. Dahlia gave him the asari mercenary's shotgun, the one Hann had been too weak to use, which Dr. Solus had locked up in a cabinet with the Eclipse squad's other confiscated weaponry. They made duly sure that David was strong enough to pull the trigger.

"My uncle taught me how to shoot," he had promised during the preparatory stages of their mission. "He thought it was an essential part of living in a colony, being able to protect myself against wildlife, raiders...or human neighbors who didn't think much of a batarian in their midst."

David also carried a number of small pistols, two holstered on his hips and one at his ankle. He'd initially, idly complained about being unaccustomed to the extra weight. The pistols were intended for the others once aboard the ship, although everyone hoped they would not be needed. She really wished Dr. Solus would've agreed to join the mission; his skill could've made all the difference.

"No. Given choice between heal and hurt, choose heal every time," the doctor said in his rapid-fire logic. "Still, can see need for rescue. Ounce of prevention, pound of cure; that's the human expression. Hmm, dangerous but doubt I can dissuade you."

Dr. Solus provided the newly formed team with some tubes of medi-gel, unlocked the confiscated weapons for them, and offered strategic advice that was probably utterly lost on them. Dahlia hated the knowledge that she was counted with David as one of the team's "heavy-hitters." Her arc reactor harness, in its low power standby state, was inconspicuous, and she imagined that they would never think to look for experimental technology in her palms and on her soles. The rest of her modified survival suit characterized her as little more than a subjugated spacer.

Even if, in theory, she was the best armed member of the group, she hardly felt up to snuff. Dahlia could not shake the creeping anxiety that returned every time her thoughts inevitably returned to the raid on the clinic. However, she glanced over her shoulder at the others and, almost resentfully, remember how much depended on her. Not only were Hann and Elsai trailing behind her, also playing the part of new slaves, but anchoring the end of their line, with downcast eyes, was Jin.

After a final visit to say goodbye to his lifeless beloved, it was not hard for the volus to overhear Hann and Elsai loudly arguing about whether to go along with David's plan. He had approached them only a few hours before they set out. In perhaps the group's first and only unanimous decisions, none of them thought the volus should come along. He had no stake in the venture, and they silently wondered what the small fellow could contribute.

"With Ryxie gone," he wheezed, more from grief than his breather, "there's nothing left for me here….Omega holds nothing but bitter memories…that I want to escape. I've already….sold my stake in my business….I'm leaving this station….whether you have me or not, but I'd rather….travel with friends than….travel alone."

No one had the heart to turn him away. In fact, Jin had cemented everyone's resolve to see the mission through.

"Hold it!" snapped another batarian. He jumped up from where he sat on a railing beside the raider ship. He pointed one finger accusingly at the approaching group while his other hand fumbled to draw his pistol. "Where do you think you're going?"

"I've got some more slaves for the shipment," David barked. "I talked it over with Hrunt, so get that gun out of my face."

"I didn't hear anything about this," the watchman countered. "Just who are you?"

"Name's Ghule," David said, offering his batarian middle name.

"Ghule?" the watchman chuckled. "Does that make you Hrunt's woman?"

"You find my name funny?" David said, using the attitude and glare he'd rehearsed with Elsai. "So did my father when he gave it to me, right up until I cut off his hands and gouged out all four of his eyes. He didn't find it too funny after that. Would you?"

"Whoa, calm down. Hold on." The watchman activated his communicator. "Hey Forlak, get out here. Got a few more bodies to toss in the hold….yeah, yeah, we'll get the commission."

After a couple minutes, another batarian with a deep red complexion emerged from the gangway. A blocky assault rifle dangled by a shoulder strap, hanging alongside his waist. Mumbling angrily to himself, he snatched the cord from David's hands. With a rough jerk of the line, he wordlessly commanded the "slaves" to follow him aboard.

David moved to follow, but the watchman stopped him with a heavy palm jabbed into his chest.

"What about my finder's fee?" David pleaded. His plan called for him to follow the others onto the ship. He tried to mask his dismay with more feigned bravado.

"Hey, that's all between you and Hrunt. Take it up with him," the watchman growled.

Dahlia stopped to look back at David, hoping for some cue or suggestion. She didn't see much before the crewman Forlak delivered a stiff elbow check to her shoulder blade. He put most of his weight into it, probably hoping that she'd fall and then he'd get to kick her while she was down. Dahlia stumbled but caught her footing. As she was dragged into the shadows of the dimly lit ship, Dahlia realized that the next move was hers.


	12. Departure

Despite the pirate dragging her along by the cord wrapped around her wrists, for just an instant Dahlia felt nostalgic. The narrow hallway, running from the helm at the bow to the rest of the ship, reminded her of the crowded life aboard the Helash. She also reflected on how Imani would've thrown a fit to see how poorly kept this dirty, messy ship was.

The batarian pirate led Dahlia and her friends into what served as a living area: a wider space at the center of the ship furnished with a stained, worn table, a ratty couch set in front of a communal computer console and viewing screen, and some bunks set against the port and starboard walls. Only one other pirate, a drell woman with teal skin highlighted by the dim lighting, sat in the common room. She sat on the floor, propped against a bunk, thoroughly engrossed by the contents of a datapad. She didn't even take notice of the new arrivals.

Seeing that all the bunks were empty, Dahlia surmised that most of the crew was carousing on the station. With only three crew to oppose them - Forlak and the drell inside the ship, and the watchman on the docks - Dahlia bit her lip and accepted that she would probably never get a better opportunity.

She effortlessly slipped her hands out of the fake knots Hann tied in the cord. Before the pirate Forlak even realized anything was amiss, a full-strength repulsor blast drove him face-first into a bulkhead. The drell leapt to her feet, fishing a gun from under her bunk's pillow. She vaulted over the table, dodging a second repulsor shot from Dahlia.

Hann, Elsai, and Jin had also escaped their deceptive bonds, but they were still unarmed. David had their weapons outside the ship where he'd been stopped. Jin ran for the helm; his role in the plan was to secure the controls and prepare the ship for immediate departure. Hann dove for the downed Forlak, intending to steal a weapon from him - hopefully one he was strong enough to use. Elsai took cover behind a bulkhead corner and used her suit's radio to contact David.

Dahlia maneuvered around the cabin using short boosts, but she was hampered by the very cramped quarters. She desperately darted to evade bursts of fire from the drell's automatic, handheld weapon. With no kinetic barriers and only very limited armor, Dahlia had to rely on quick movement and the cabin's clutter to protect her. After more rounds than Dahlia cared to count, the drell stopped to eject her Locust's thermal clip. Dahlia lined up a barrage of repulsor shots, but each burst missed the surprisingly nimble drell. In the scant time they had to prepare, Dahlia had taken some time to practice her aim in a makeshift target range outside the clinic using scraps of metal and plastic, but a moving target was worlds apart from her very limited experience.

The drell was about the insert another thermal clip grabbed from a nearby rack and open a new hail of torturous fire on Dahlia, but Elsai blindsided her, tackling the pirate to the cabin floor. Elsai grabbed the drell's wrist and slammed her hand into the deck plating over and over again, trying to force the gun from her grip. The drell unbalanced Elsai by snaking a leg behind her and forcing the quarian to her knees. She drew a knife from an ankle sheath, aiming for Elsai's throat, but another shot rang out.

David stood at the mouth of the hallway. He wielded the Scimitar shotgun confiscated from the Eclipse mercenary who attacked the clinic. His shot had purposefully been aimed wide, however. He dared not risk hitting Elsai, so he just intended to scare off the drell. It worked. The drell pirate, discovering another, better armed attacker, and seeing that her only other crewmate was being flailed by the male quarian's wildly pounding fists, tried to make a break for freedom. Dahlia froze, her surge of adrenaline running dry. David reacted too slowly. The pirate shoved him into the wall and pushed her towards the gangway off the ship.

"Let her go," David shouted, re-steadying his footing. "Check for any more crew and get ready for launch."

Dahlia's mind went to autopilot. She moved towards the rear of the ship, naturally gravitating towards engineering. She passed Elsai and Hann who were using the cord to restrain the pirate Forlak. David disappeared down the hatch into the cargo hold beneath the main crew deck. Drawing upon everything she learned working with Imani and the other crew aboard the Helash, Dahlia fervently strived to get the helium-3 fuel running to the fusion torch maneuvering thrusters. Having much more experience maintaining ship's systems than operating them, she relied very much on Pepper's assistance. Over her communicator, she heard chatter from the rest of her erstwhile team.

"No pirates in the hold," David announced. "I'm freeing the prisoners. Are we ready for launch yet?"

"Not yet," Jin panted, stress taking a toll on his nerves, "but Dahlia's getting...the engines fired up quickly."

"Elsai and I just kicked that batarian...er, the bad one, off the ship and we've got the hatch sealed."

"Okay," Dahlia said, catching her short breath while staring at the red, orange, and green lights blinking or holding steady across the readouts and consoles, "Let's go."

* * *

Once the ship was free of its moorings, cleared the docks, and the cyclopean spires of Omega station no longer pressed close around the ship, Dahlia could think and breathe clearly. She plugged Pepper into the ship's computers, commanding her to sweep the systems and disable any tracking beacons or transponders. Her survival instincts reemerged, fed by her need to keep ahead of any hunters, real or imagined.

David called the quarians down to the cargo hold to start treating the prisoners' injuries, physical and psychological. Although Hann and Elsai only had a couple weeks of amatuer experience at the clinic, David reasoned that their aid was far more help than the prisoners had received in quite a while. Jin stayed at the helm. While most of his flight experience was with cargo transports on the station, that still put him ahead of the others.

"So...where are we going?" Jin called from the bow.

"There's about two dozen humans in the hold, including my uncle and his family," David assessed. "We don't have enough supplies to take care of them for long. We need to take them to a human colony so they can get medical attention and be taken home."

"Pepper, what's nearby?" Dahlia asked.

"According to star charts downloaded from the quarian databases, a single mass relay jump would bring us from the Omega Nebula to the human colony on Horizon in the Iera System within the Shadow Sea."

"Everyone hear that?" Dahlia called.

"Roger," Jin replied via comms at the helm. "Heading for the mass relay. Um...can your V.I. help me...plot a course through the relay?...I've never done that before."

"Affirmative," Pepper confirmed.

"I really hope the prisoners in the hold can't hear us," Dahlia said to herself. "They'd probably feel safer with the pirates."

The ship's new crew performed their newfound roles to the best of their decidedly limited abilities. The small vessel crawled awkwardly towards the system's mass relay. With more than a few gritted teeth and crossed fingers, they flared through the relay like a brilliant, blue-shifted bullet.

* * *

Author's Note: Hello everyone! This chapter marks the "season finale" for Dahlia Stark, ending the Omega Saga. The story will continue very soon with the first episode of season two, the Horizon Saga. Thank you so, so much for the favorites, the follows, and the comments. I joined the site last year at the suggestion of a new friend, and I've been using this as an opportunity to get back into writing, so the encouragement means more to me than I can possibly express. I hope you've enjoyed the story so far, and I hope that you'll like the future installments even more. See you all next time!


	13. First Interlude

"I'm surprised you asked for me, sir. Whatever the task, wouldn't Ms. Lawson be better suited?" Viktor Hand asked, his words dripping with sarcasm.

His superior - or at least his holographic replica produced by Minuteman Station's quantum-entanglement communicator - took a long, slow puff from his cigarette before answering.

"Spare me your petty rivalry. Miranda is tied up with a very important project. The less said the better. What I have for you, Viktor, is right up your alley. We've received an interesting tip from an informant on Omega. It seems that Tony Stark's daughter is alive and carrying on the family legacy."

"Shall I depart for Omega to extend her our generosity?"

"Unfortunately, she's already left the station. Your first objective will be to locate Ms. Stark. You'll then need to observe her and gather information. We know very little about this woman, such as where she's been hiding for the past twelve years. I don't like being in the dark."

"Speaking of which, do I get to know our endgame or is that simply need-to-know?"

Gleaning answers was always difficult. He could never look his boss in the eye. Viktor doubted that anyone could, at least for long. The subtle blue glow of his ocular implants was supremely unnerving.

"When Tony Stark died, he took a lot of promising ideas to the grave with him. If he left anything behind, his daughter will have it...or she'll know how to find it."

"So my ultimate objective is to recruit her?"

"No one can survive in this galaxy alone. Ms. Stark will need friends, and Cerberus can be an excellent friend to someone with her potential. The corporate intrigue behind her parents' death, however, will have probably left her paranoid. Approaching Ms. Stark will require sincerity to earn her trust, at least at first."

"We'll control chip her?"

"If necessary to secure her cooperation. I knew Tony Stark, and if his daughter is anything like him, her personality is something we can do without."

Viktor's mission briefing did not last much longer. After the Illusive Man dispatched him, Viktor reported to the shuttle waiting to ferry him to Omega so he could pick up Dahlia Stark's trail.

* * *

Author's Note: Sorry for the comparatively short installment. This interlude serves as an epilogue for the Omega Saga as well as a teaser for the next season. I will upload the first episode of the new season tomorrow night, so please join us for Dahlia Stark: The Horizon Saga.


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